THE PHILOSOPHY
OF WORDS
F. GARLANDA
^73
ANGLO-SAXON COLLECTION
THE BEQUEST OF
Professor op Ei^glish Literature
EV THE COEJ^ErLL ITjOVEHSITY
18TO-1911
Cornell University Library
P 121.G23
Philosophy of words.
3 1924 026 440 754
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Library
The original of tiiis bool< is in
tine Cornell University Library.
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THE
Philosophy of Words.
A POPULAR INTRODUCTION TO THE
SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE
FREDERIC GARLANDA, Ph.D.
NEW YORK :
GARLANDA & CO.,
31 East 17TH St.
y
Gr:i3
Copyright, 1886,
BY
F. GARLANDA.
h
KC
The more we analyze language, the more clearly we see
that it transcends in depth the most conscious productions
of the mind.
SCHELLING.
I believe truly that languages are the best mirror of the
mind, and that an exact analysis of the signification of
words would make us better acquainted than any thing
else with the operations of the understanding.
Leibnitz.
He who would examine the influence which words, mere
words, have exercised on the minds of men, might write a
history of the world that would teach us more than any
which we yet possess.
Max Muller.
As the fossils of the rocks disclose to the palaeontologist
the various forms of life that have successively appeared
upon the globe, so, too, the fossils of speech disclose to
the scientific philologist the various stages that have been
reached in the growth of human consciousness.
A. H. Sayce.
Language is the reflection of the thoughts and behefs
of communities from their eariiest days ; and by tracing its
changes and its fortunes, by discovering the origin and
history of words and their meanings, we can read those
thoughts and beliefs with greater certainty and minute-
ness than had they been traced by the pen of the histo-
rian.
A. H. Sayce.
Etymology tends directly to aid us in the clear under-
standing and just and forcible employment of the words
which compose our own language.
George P. Marsh.
Etymology has the charm of all sciences which deal
with the beginning and growth of the great products of
nature or mind.
George Curtius.
PREFACE.
It is the aim of this work to explain as
plainly as possible some of the most important
results of the Science of Language.
It is astonishing how little is generally
known, even by educated people, about lan-
guage, — what it is, whence our words come,
what is their true bearing, how is our
language connected with those spoken, by peo-
ples ^around us, etc. We seem to speak too
much as birds sing — without ever bending our
minds to reflect on the nature of the sounds
we utter.
The main results of geology, physiology,
chemistry and other sciences are already a
possession of the public at large. Why should
we not pay some attention also to this wonder-
ful instrument, without which civilization,
society itself, could not be possible ? An
inquiry into the nature of our language can
VI PREFACE.
not be less interesting, hardly less important,
than the study of the constitution of the earth,
or of our body.
A work on this subject which aims to be
popular, is necessarily imperfect and incom-
plete. Many things are to be left out ; tech-
nical terms must be avoided as much as possi-
ble ; rigorous scientific order can not generally
be followed ; too often concision must be given
up and repetitions resorted to for the sake of
plainness and clearness. It is also, of course,
impossible not tp use now and then instances,
comparisons and explanations already given by
others, especially in such standard works as
those of Prof. Whitney and Max Miiller.
All suggestions which may help to make
this work more useful and less incomplete, will
meet with thankful acknowledgment.
F. G.
New York, January, 1886.
CONTENTS.
I. Introduction, - . . . i
II. Sounds and Language, - - 50
III. The English Language, - 86
Household Words, - - - 108
Church Words, 113
Words of Society, 118
Political Words, 129
IV. Comparative Grammar, - - 138
V. Outlines of the History of the Science of
Language, - - - 169
VI. The Question of the Origin of Language, igo
VII. Comparative Mythology, - 208
VIII. Languages and Races — Local and Family Names, 228
IX. Language and Education, - 262
The Philosophy of Words.
I.
INTRODUCTION.
IT is a common saying that wonder is the
child of ignorance. There is some truth
in these words, when they are applied to the
unreasonable wondering of slow or prejudiced
minds, which every thing just out of the beaten
tracks of every day life is enough to startle.
But if we speak of that wonder which is worthy
of a thoughtful mind, we may call itratherthe
child of knowledge. Every progress in life,
every new discovery, teaches us that the more
we know, the more we find to wonder at.
Science increases the world of wonders not less
, than the world of knowledge, and seems to
add wings to our imagination as well as
strength to our reason.
2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
Indeed, even the roughest shepherd who
looks at the dawn brightening in the east, or
at evening, while driving his flock home, stops
to contemplate the sky ablaze with the glow of
the setting sun, and the sailor who watches
from the deck the great vault of heaven and its
countless stars mirrored in the water around
him, can not but be moved by the great-
ness of such scenes. Yet their admiration,
great as it is, can not even be compared with
that of the student of astronomy, who knows
what those stars are, and how many thousands
of millions of miles their light has traveled to
reach us ; who knows that nearly every one of
those countless sparkling points is the centre of
a separate solar system, each system as great
and wonderful as that in which we live.
Moreover, the scholar brings his medita-
tions to bear upon fields full of wonders
unspeakably great, the importance, often even
the existence, of which is entirely unknown to
the uneducated. There are millions of men,
for instance, who live and die without ever
asking themselves a question about this won-
derful system of sounds by which we communi-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 3
cate with our fellow beings. Yet, what is there
in the world more suggestive of thought and
worthier of meditation than " Language " ?
Whence comes this simple yet mysterious
music, by means of which we lay open, so to
speak, our minds to our fellow men, and read
in their minds in turn? How is it made? oris
it made at all? We speak of living languages
and dead languages ; but how does a language
come to life ? how does it perish ? Where are
the magic forces to give birth to such a
marvelous child, and where is the giant strpng
enough to destroy it ?
The growth of herbs and trees and flowers is
wonderful indeed, with so many families differ-
ing from region to region, from climate to
climate. But see what happens with language :
there is an endless growth of words and sounds,
all over the world, differing not only according
to climates and regions, but often from village
to village. How does this happen ? What
does it mean that, if you travel all over the
world, though you may not know the names of
all the trees and flowers you see, still their
forms and colors strike you not less, and some-
4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
times even more, than they do the natives ; but
if you overstep the boundaries of your own
nation, and go to a play, or listen to a speech,
in a foreign language, you see people laughing,
applauding or weeping at words which for you
are entirely meaningless ? If it is true that we
are all brothers, how is it that, in Europe for
instance, a few hours' travel takes you among
people whom you understand no more than
you would the Polynesians or the Chinese?
And again, how are words formed ? What
conjiection is there between our ideas and our
words, that, when we utter certain sounds, we
are sure that those who listen to us understand
exactly what we mean ; and by those sounds
we actually lay our minds bare before, our lis-
teners? And how is it that an Arab, a Chinese,
in order to convey the same idea, uses quite
different sounds, and is equally sure to be
understood by his audience?
It is hardly possible, I think, to find in the
whole range of human life problems more inter-
esting than these which are suggested even
by a superficial consideration of what "lan-
guage " is.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. S
Still, if we look at ourselves and people
around us, we may safely assert that no nat-
ural or social phenomenon receives so little con-
sideration on the part of the large majority of
men. So few pay attention to these facts that,
if you ask a hundred persons what a " word "
is, ninety-nine will not be able to give a satis-
factory answer. Only a few days ago I hap-
pened to read in a grammar that " words con-
sist of sounds and letters." That sounds are
to be considered as constituents of " words," is
true, but letters have no more to do with the
constitution of words than the colors of a land-
scape painter with the existence of the land
itself. Of course we may represent with let-
ters, that is we may write words, just as we
can paint trees and flowers ; but words exist
without letters, as flowers and trees exist with-
out painters. Many tribes have no writing ;
still, they have words.
But we must not wonder at the little con-
sideration language (not this or that language,
but language in itself, or the nature of language),
has received and still receives from most men.
It is so intimately connected with our own being
6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
that it requires no little power of reflection to
bring our thoughts to bear upon it. It grows
with our own consciousness, and we are no
more aware of the growth of our language than
we are aware of the growth of our brain.
Every now and then one finds people, other-
wise cultivated but lacking special linguistic
training, who are ready to put forth theories
about words and languages, and find special
delight in hunting out what they call etymolo-
gies. But their theories and would-be etymol-
ogies are in the main nothing but wild vagaries
and fancies, utterly apart from scientific reason-
ing and facts. They do just as men did when,
in the absence of any astronomical lore, looking
at the daily appearing and disappearing of the
sun, and eager to have some reason for this
phenomenon, they imagined that the sun was
going to or rising from his bed. And we must
remember that centuries elapsed before man-
kind ceased to be satisfied with this explan-
ation.
But however childish such explanations, how-
ever wild and fanciful such etymologies, we
must not laugh at them. In those puerile
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. ^
attempts we have the origin of two great
sciences : astronomy and the science of lan-
guage. They show us the human mind busy,
asking: "Why this? whence? wherefore?"
The answer is wrong, but at the same time
a great step is made ; instead of merely gazing
in mute bewilderment at the phenomena of
the sky, instead of wondering in helpless
stupor at the mysteries of language, men
begin to ask, "Why?" and thus to recognize
by implication that a why there must be, and
it must be found out. This is the beginning
of all scientific research, and all intellectual
progress. There, is, however, this difference,
that a knowledge of the laws of the heavens
was attained comparatively early in the history
of mankind, while the science of language is
not yet one century old, and its results are
even to this day outside of the pale of common
education. People who listen in earnest when
you explain the laws that govern the move-
ments of the heavenly bodies, would think you
were jesting were you to ask why a cat is
called cat? or why a man who has children is
called father ? Still, whatever be the origin of
8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
language, we can not suppose that words have
been cast to right and left upon things, hap-
hazard. If we are reasonable beings, we may-
assume a priori that there must be a reason,
even if we are not able to find it out, whj^
certain things have been called by certain
names ; why, for instance, a certain domestic
animal has been called cat, and a man who has
children is c-a\\&6i father.
But we can go further than this : not only
there must be a reason for the meanings of our
words, but in most cases we are able to find it
out, and this by processes as certain and trust-
worthy as those of the chemist, who, after
having analyzed a new substance, tells us that
it belongs to such and such a family of chemical
bodies, has such and such qualities, and is
made up of such and such elements. This is
what the science of language — or linguistic
science, or comparative philology, as it is
variously called — does with words.
Before proceeding to state and examine the
theoretical principles which have been reached
and which constitute the main body of this
science, let us take some practical illustrations,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 9
In this way, I think, the processes will become
clearer and the theoretic principles will be
more easily understood. Let us begin with
one or two proper names, because in this,
more perhaps than in any other province in the
field of language, people are reluctant to admit
a reason for the meanings of words. When one
wants to name a child, he consults his memo-
ries, his taste, his fancy, his interest, often his
caprice, but seldom, if ever, does he stop to
ask whether the name he is going to choose
may have a meaning. So when we call
a girl by her name, " Kitty "for instance, we think
of her, if we think of any thing at all, and never
bother ourselves by asking what " Kitty" means.
Most men would say that " Kitty" is a name
for women, not for men ; but, as for its having
any further significance, they neither under-
stand nor believe it. In fact, had we nothing
but this form of the name — Kitty — it would
be difficult, even impossible, to tell whether
there is any meaning in it. But we know that
Kitty is a familiar, endearing form of the name
Kate ; which, in its turn, is not ah original
form, but is derived from Katharine, The
10 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
word, then, with which we have really to
deal, is not Kitty, but Katharine. Katharine,,
we can say at once, is not a name exclu-
sively English ; we have in German Kath-
arine, in French Catherine, in Italian
Caterina and Catarina, in Spanish Catalina.
All these forms may be further decomposed :
ina in Italian and Spanish, ine in French, are
suffixes which denote diminution and at the
same time endearment and gracefulness ; thus,
in Italian, donna means " woman " ; donnina " a
graceful little woman"; cavalla,"di mare";
cavallina, " a graceful spirited little mare," etc.
From Katharine, then, we go back to a form
kathara, which we find in Greek. Katharos,
feminine kathara, is an adjective which means
" pure." Kitty, then, is a secondary endearing
form of kathara, and means " pure."
Now one might ask why " kathara " means
pure ? Why the tli is preserved in German and
English, and not in Italian and Spanish, where
we have simply t? Why in Italian we have two
forms, Caterina and Catarina ? Why in Span-
ish we have /, Catalina ? And, finally, why in
tracing back the meaning of Kitty, we
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. II
went to Greek, and not, for instance, to He-
brew ?
All these questions can be answered fully
and with certainty, and many of them will be
answered in the course of these pages. But
for the sake of order and clearness, let us
defer these investigations and proceed step by
step ; and, first, let us inquire into the meaning
of another proper name.
Suppose we were asked what is the meaning
of that vulgarism " Gene " which is used in some
parts of this country. Of course we must go
back to its full and correct form, Eugene. This
is also a Greek word, " eugenfes," which is a com-
pound : " eu " " well " ; " genis " derived from the
root^^w, which we have also in "progenitor,"
"generate," etc., and means " to generate," to
" bring to life." So that " eugen^s," as well
as " Gene," which at first looks more like a
puzzle than any thing else, means simply " well-
born."
And now it would be easy and interesting to
follow this root " gen " in Sanscrit, in Gothic,
in Latin, in Greek and other kindred languages.
But for the present we must let it alone:
12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
doubtless it will fall again in our track, and then
we shall dissect it as mercilessly as an anato-
mist. We shall be even more cruel : the anat-
omist plunges his scalpel into a dead, senseless
body, while we shall tear open the heart and
the brain of a being still palpitating with life.
Let us now make the subject of our consid-
erations some of the most common words which
we use every day, without ever suspecting that
they carry, hidden in their bosom, the reason
of their own meaning, and that their meaning
was once entirely different from now, and often
absolutely incompatible with our tendencies,
habits and creeds, scientific as well as religious,
social as well as political. Let us take for
instance the word which I have just used :
" consideration." It is easy to see that this word
can be decomposed : -Hon is a suffix which we
find in very many words, as termina-tion, medita-
tion, elec-tion, reflec-tion, etc., and is used gener-
ally in the formation {forma-tion) of abstract
nouns. We see, moreover, that this word is
formed from the verb to consider. Now we
must ascertain where this consider comes from.
We find in Latin the verb considero which has
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 13
the same meaning and is, beyond a doubt, the
same verb as the English consider. Now one
who knows Latin can easily see that this con-
sidero, in its turn, may be further decomposed,
as con is a prefix which means with. We are
left with the root sider. What does this mean ?
We have in Latin another word with the root
sider: the word sidus, plural sidera, which
means star.
What connection may there be between stars
and consideration ? A very open and easily
intelligible connection, if we bear in mind the
low state of civilization in which this old word
must have been formed. In the remote past,
when the Latins were no more advanced in
civilization than those barbarians whom they
were destined to conquer, the superstitious peo-
ple, before undertaking any thing, before mak-
ing any decision, used to consult the stars. So,
in those times the man who said he wanted to
consider, meant really that he wanted to look
at the stars and see whether they were propi-
tious to his undertaking or not. By and by,
with the progress of civilization, such super-
stitious belief in the influence of the stars died
14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
away, but the word remained ; and when now
we say, and we say it every moment, " I must
consider this matter," we are no more aware of
our mentioning any thing in connection with
the stars, than I am aware of the fact that the
ground on which I now rest my feet while
writing, flies through space at the rate of thou-
sands of miles an hour.
There is another word we use every day, of
whose primitive meaning we are utterly un-
conscious : the word conjecture. This is also
a Latin word : coniectura. — Tura, like -tion, is a
suffix and is represented in English by -ture :
scrip-ture,na-ture, crea-ture, etc. The verb coniecto
is a Latin verb derived from coniicio, to " throw
together," from con, together, and the root tac
(which we see in the simple iacid) " to throw."
Conjecture, then, brings us back to this root iac
and means properly the action of " throwing
together" something. Once superstitiouspeople,
before trying to guess at any thing, used to
"throw together "little stones, dice, or other
things of the kind, and according to the way
these objects fell, they formed their opinion.
A superstition which is not merely prehistoric.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 15
after all. Very likely not a few of my readers
remember having seen children toss up cents
again and again in order to have a base for
their guessing.
To the same root iac many other words are
to be referred, Vik£ e-jec-tion, {e, out); de-jec-tion
{de, down, downward) ; ob-jec-tion {ob, against ;
something, which one throws against), ob-jec-
tion-able, etc. Inter-jec-tion means properly
something which we throw in, between our
words (Latin inter, between).
Thus, however different such words as con-
jecture, objectionable, interjection, are in sound
and meaning, they are all to be referred to the
root iac.
The same root we meet in other Latin words,
which have an echo in the English language.
Thus, through the sufifix -ulu, we have iac-
ulum, which means something to be thrown, an
arrow, a dart ; iaculus was the name given to a
serpent which is said to throw itself down from
trees upon its prey. In connection with
iaculum, we have the verb iaculari, which
means to throw, to dart off ; " iaculatorius cam-
pus" was the field where the youths practiced
1 6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
with arrows and spears. From this verb " iac-
ulari" with the prefix e, out, and the suffix
-tion, which we have already met, is formed the
English word e-jacula-tion, which means prop-
erly something which we " throw out " of our
breast, a short prayer, which we speed as an
arrow to heaven from the depth of our heart.
Take the word pensively and let us apply
to it the scalpel of the comparative philologist.
First we have the suffix -ly, which is employed
to form so many English adjectives and
adverbs : lovely, friendly, silly, wittily, stu-
pidly, etc. — We shall see further on, where this
-ly comes from, and what it means. We are
left with the adjective pensive. In this we
recognize the common suffix for adjectives —
ive : sensit-ive, capt-ive, nat-ive, adject-ive, con-
sumpt-ive, talkat-ive, primit-ive, etc. Thus we
arrive at the root pens — the same that we find
in the French "pens-er," Italian "pens-are,"
and Spanish " pens-ar," meaning "to think";
hence "pensively " corresponds exactly to
"thoughtfully." But "think" is not the
priniitive meaning of the root pens. Its real
meaning was to weigh ; and the man who thinks
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 17
before he acts, weighs the pros and cons. But
pens itself is not a primary root. As ject (in
e-ject, in-ject, etc.) is formed from the past of
the verb "iacio," so pens is formed from the
past (pensum) of the verb " pend-ere," whose
root pend means to hang. When we say: a
misfortune is " im-pend-ing," we mean that it is
" hanging " over us. One who is in " suspense,"
is swaying to and fro. One who is " depend-
ent " on his friends, is " hanging on " them :
but for their support he would fall to the
ground. It is easy to see the connection
between the meanings of the roots pend and
pens, between to hang and to weigh.
But one might ask, how do you pass from
the root /^«(/ to the root /^«j .^ What do you
do with the d oi pend ? Is the loss of the d
merely an arbitrary thing? Are we to believe
then that Voltaire was right when he said that
etymology is a science where vowels count
for nothing and consonants very little ?
Not so. So it was indeed, when etymology
was no science at all ; when the science of lan-
guage was in no better state than astronomy
or geography, when men believed that at even-
l8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
ing the sun was going to bed ; when it was
taught in the schools that the so-called columns
of Hercules were the end of the world ; and
the- earth was a large flat disk, encircled by the
great river, Ocean. But it is not so now. The
science of language or comparative philology-
admits no fact, not a change or a transposition,
which it can not account for in a satisfactory
way. The philologist is just as exact in his
analysis of words as the chemist in his analy-
sis of bodies.
• The verb " pend-ere " takes, in its past, the
sufifix i'z^7«, which is very common in Latin for
such formations. We should have then " pend-
sum". But there is a lawwhich rules through-
out the Latin language that a d, when it hap-
pens to be before an j, disappears. In the same
way from the root vid, " to see," we have vi-
sio (iox i'." If we take away
the adverbial sufifix -ly, we have fluent, which
is nothing else than the present participle of
the Latin verb fluere, "to flow." We mean
then that words "flow " from his lips steadily
and easily as water from a fountain. So the
phrase "fluency of speech," if we just think
over it a little, raises before us the image of
a stately river flowing through valleys and
plains.
Another very common phrase is : "I intend
to do this, or that." The root tend means
properly to " stretch, "as we have it in the words
" to tend a bow." " To intend " (with that m
intensifying) means, as it were, to tend the bow
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 39
of one's mind toward something, to " aim " at
something. And when we hear : " His inten-
tion is this," it does not require a great deal of
imagination to see in the background of the
word, if I may say so, a man tending his bow,
ready to shoot his arrow. This certainly was
the first meaning of the vvord, which, by the
wear and tear of daily use, has lost its primitive
picturesqueness, and retains only the substance,
the sinew, so to speak, of its meaning; like an
ancient Etruscan vase, which has lost its delicate
outline, and has retained of its original self just
enough to remind us of what it was.
Take the word ''appetite." An etymologist of
the old school, for whom facts were nothing and
imagination was every thing, would perhaps
have seen some connection between this word
and the French petite, " small," and said that
" appetite " means a small hunger, or have ut-
tered some other nonsense of the kind.
Let us look, above all, into the body of the
word ; let us dissect it, and then we may safely
say what it is, and what it comes from. Appe-
tite, French app^tit, Italian appetito, Latin
appetitus, are all one and the same word. Peti-
40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
tus is the past participle of the verb petere,
which means to seek, to ask for (see " peti-
tion"). The preposition ad means " to,"
" toward." So that the real meaning of appetite
is a wishing or longing for any thing, and it has
come to be applied especially to food, although
formerly it was said of almost every kind of
desire, and especially of the passions, of the
longings which torment our poor, frail human
nature.
Now let us inquire further into the origin of
this word pet-ere ; its meaning, " to tvish," is
too immaterial to be primitive. There must be
some other less ideal meaning at the bottom.
We find in Latin itself this root pet, Greek pet,
Sanskrit pat, which means to " fly," and also to
run very quickly. We see clearly this meaning
in the word " im-pet-us," in the Greek verb
pet-omai which means " to fly," and in all
derivatives from the Sanskrit root pat. The
verb appetere, then, means properly to run
toward something, that is, to long for it, to wish.
This Sanskrit root pat is to be found in some
other English words. From this root and the
suffix -tra, (Latin -trum, Greek -tron), we have
THE PHILOSOPBY OF WORDS. 41
the -word pat-tra, and then pa-tra, which means
the instrunaent with which one flies, that is a
" feather," a wing. In the Teutonic languages,
a Sanskrit or Latin p is generally represented
by/".- for instance, Sd^nslivit pitar, 'La.tm pater,
German vater, English father. In the same way
this Sanskrit word patra, corresponds normally
to the Gothic fadar, to the old High German
fedara, and to the ^Vi^\s\\. feather.
But from the root pat, which in Latin is, as
we have seen, /^/, we have another word, pet-
na, Latin " pen-na," which means, also, an in-
strument for flying — a feather. But as a feath-
er was used for writing, the word penna came
very naturally to have the meaning oi pen, and
pen is nothing else than the Latin penna. Ap-
petite, then, ^.xiA pen zxiA featherh^.vG. dX the bot-
tom one and the same root, and if we have any
faith in facts, any confidence in the power of
human reason, we can not entertain a doubt
that this fact is true, just as it is true that sect
and insect, deus and theos, however similar, have
nothing in common.
We may notice in passing that it is not the
curious and complicated words, but the com-
42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
mon and familiar ones which teach us the
most. Many wonder what the etymology of
algebra may be, of alcohol, odometer, seismo-
graph, etc. But they do not know, they do
not even suspect that a treasure of historical
and prehistorical information lies hidden in
every one of the words which they use in their
daily intercourse with their children, their wives,
their friends. It is always the same old story :
men dream about fabulous mines that will make
so many Croesuses of them, and do not see that
wealth lies in store for them at their very door,
if only they would cultivate their ground prop-
erly and avail themselves of the present oppor-
tunities. We all dream about future probabili-
ties, but the characteristic of true genius is to
make the best of every thing that lies near at
hand. Men had to go to work mines in Cali-
fornia to find out what heaps of gold lay hidden
in all those fields if only they were tilled ; men
had to learn Sanskrit to find out what inex-
haustible stores of information, linguistic, his-
torical, and philosophical were gathered in their
every day talking, in the dialects of the hum-
blest and most uneducated people.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 43
Let US continue our researches, still looking
at the most common words. Take the word
application. We must separate the well known
suffix tion ; we must take away the prefix ad,
whose d has been assimilated to the following
consonant, as "ad-petitus " gives " ap-petitus,"
" appetite "; as " ad-plause " gives " ap-plause ";
as " ad-prove " gives " approve," etc. Weare left
with the root p lie. This we find in Latin and
means to fold; hence application is the folding
of one thing against another, the applying it to
another thing. And when we speak of mental
application, properly we mean that our mind
" folds itself upon," " attaches itself to " some
subject.
Likewise when we say that a thing is com-
plicated, properly we mean that it has many
folds, it is folded again and again, so as to
make it difficult to unravel it, to explain it.
This root plic we find again in many Latin
words, and of course in languages, such as
French, Italian and Spanish, derived from
Latin. We have for instance the words
duplex, triplex, quadruplex, etc., which give in
Italian duplice, trip lice, quadriiplice, etc. In
44 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
French, according to the law which we have
already seen, that a consonant between two
vowels disappears, we have double, triple, quad-
ruple, etc. These words mean " two, three,
four, times as much," or else " of two, three, four
different kinds ; " but their primitive meaning
was simply that a thing was "folded" two,
three, or four times. In the same way, and
with the same evolutions of meaning, we have
from the root "fold," twofold, threefold, four-
fold, manifold.
Let us now take the word experience. The
ideas conveyed by this word are so imma-
terial, and so complex, that at first it seems
hardly possible to unravel it, and reduce
it to a single root with a single material
meaning. Still the process is easy and cer-
tain. Experience is the same word as the French
experience, Latin experientia. From this we
must separate the whole sufifix i-cntia, which is
represented in English and French by i-ence
(conf. aud-ience, Latin aud-ientia, from the
root aud, to hear). Of course it is possible to
analyze further this suffix i-ence, and see how
it was formed. But for the present it will
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 45
suffice for our purpose to recognize the for-
mative character of this part of the word, i-ence.
From what remains, exper, we must still take
away the prefix ex which means out, and is
to be met in very many English words of
Latin origin. We arrive at last at the
root per. This same root, which we have in
Latin ex-per-ior, Greek peir-ao, means to go
through ; hence ex-per-tus, expert, is the man
who has " gone through and has come out " ;
experience is the wisdom of an expert, and also,
in English, the act of going through some
trial. This root per is to be connected
with the English to "fare" German fahren,
Gothic faran, because, as we have just seen,
we must expect to find an /in the Teutonic
languages whenever we have a / in Latin or
Greek. Compare father with Latin pater.
Here we have two words, which many peo-
ple not acquainted with the science of lan-
guage, would fain group together: to decide and
deciduous. Both of them are of Latin origin,
but decide is formed from the preposition de
and the root eld, a weakened form of the root
caed which means to cut, and also to kill.
4.6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
Hence to decide, decision, mean to cut a ques-
tion short, to separate wrong from right. The
same root we have in homicide, to cut, to kill
a man ; suicide, the killing of one's self.
Deciduous is from the preposition de and the
root cid; which is in its turn a weakened form
of the root cad (compare iic in con-iic-io from
iac) which means " to fall " ; hence deciduous
means " falling down," " subject to falling
down." This same root cad that we have seen
already in occasion, recurs in its weakened form
cid, in Occident, which means properly " fall-
ing down," but came to be applied to the
sunset, that is, to the place or time where the
sun falls down.
Now a reader with an inquisitive mind
might ask why in occasion we have a (from
cad^ and in Occident we have i. The reason
is that occasion is derived from a form of
the past of the verb cad-ere, where through
the accidents of the conjugation, the a of the
root cad becomes long, and is also accented ;
which two facts, the length and the accent,
work very efficiently in the preservation of any
sound. Occident on the contrary is properly
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 47
the present participle of the verb occidere,
where the a not being accented and not being
long, dwindles very easily into i. This same
fact of accented syllables preserved in all or
almost all their integrity, and unaccented syl-
lables passing from broader into more closed
and less distinct sounds, we can see in the
evolution of almost every word.
The same difference as that between decision
and deciduous, we have between incision (in and
eld, from caed, to cut in) and incident (from in
and eld from cad), something that falls in our
way. Casual is also derived from the root cad
(cad-sual, as occasion for occad-sion) ; " that
happens to fall, to occur." So case, Latin
casus, (from cad-sus) is something which has
happened.
As another instance of phonetic laws, we may
observe, that in Latin, while d before s disap-
pears, d before t is turned into s ; for instance
the adjective catharos, from which we have
seen Katharine is derived, comes from a root
" cadh," which means to " purify." This root is
in Latin cad, and to it we must refer the adjec-
tive cas-tus (for cad-tus), chaste, pure.
48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
But let us hasten to conclude this too long
introductory chapter. We have seen that
words can be dissected and analyzed, like any
material form ; that such dissections are to be
carried on by comparative method ; that, as a
result of such dissections, words appear to
consist of roots and of certain formative addi-
tions, which we may comprehend under the
general name of affixes. All the roots that we
have analyzed, and all those that we shall ana-
lyze hereinafter, have at the bottom a mere
material meaning, which by and by, through
an ascending metaphorical evolution, has been
turned to a less and less material, and finally to
an utterly immaterial signification. We may
also observe that all these roots are monosyl-
labic ; in fact, such are «// roots. When by dis-
secting a word we arrive at a fragment with two
syllables, we may assume that the fragment is
not a root. At least, it is not a primary root ;
it is a secondary formation which can be dis-
sected further still.
Moreover, we have caught a glimpse of the
existence of phonetic laws. This growing of
sounds into other sounds, this forming and
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 49
decaying of words, which seems so disorderly
and chaotic, is not so at all. Laws rule the
world of sounds as well as the world of stars.
The next chapter will be devoted to a fur-
ther study of these laws, and to a considera-
tion of other instances of their working.
II.
SOUNDS AND LANGUAGE.
What can seem simpler than the ABC, and what is more
difficult when we come to examine it ? — Max Muller.
To enable ourselves to understand better the
nature of the laws that govern the changes in
the sounds of which words consist, it is but
natural to investigate first what these sounds
are.
The majority of the sounds which we utter
in speaking English are represented by the Eng-
lish alphabet. There are many little nuances,
especially vowel sounds, which our alphabet
fails to represent ; but, for our purpose, we
may fairly neglect such exceptions, and assume
that our alphabet represents all the sounds we
utter in our speech.
These sounds, as every school-boy knows, are
divided into vowels and consonants. But what
is a vowel? What is a consonant ? These
things are so elementary that every one is
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 51
presumed to know them ; yet they involve such
difficult problems, linguistic and physiological
at once, that thus far there is not a definition
of these two classes of sounds, which is agreed
upon by all scholars. The common distinc-
tion, taught in schools, that vowels are sounds
which can be uttered alone, by themselves,
while consonants can not be uttered without the
accompaniment, and, as it were, the support of a
vowel, is evidently untrue, for many consonants
(for instance th,f,sh, and j,) can be pronounced
very easily without the help of a vowel.
To this classification we shall return presently.
But how are all these sounds formed ? what is
their nature and their individual characteristics ?
In answer I quote from Huxley's Elements
of Physiology, where the physiology of vocal
sounds is explained most clearly and concisely.
" Speech is voice modulated by the throat,
tongue, and lips.
" The modulation of the voice into speech is
effected by changing the form of the cavity
of the mouth and nose by the action of the
muscles which move the walls of those parts.
" The pure vowel sounds E (in he), A (in hay),
52 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
A (in ah ), O (in oli), 00 (in cool\ may be
all formed out of one note, produced by a
continuous expiration, the mouth being kept
open, but the form of its aperture being
changed for each vowel. It will be narrowest,
with the lips most drawn back, in E, widest in
A, and roundest, with the lips most protruded,
in 00.
" Certain consonants also may be pronounced
without interrupting the current of the expired
air, by modification of the form of the throat
and mouth.
"Thus the aspirate, H, is the result of a little
extra expiratory force, a sort of incipient cough.
" S and Z, Sh and J (as m jugular =G soft as in
gentry), Th, L, R, F, V, may likewise all be
produced by continuous currents of air forced
through the mouth, the shape of the cavity of
which is peculiarly modified by the tongue
and lips.
" All the vocal sounds hitherto noted so far
resemble one another, that their production
does not involve the stoppage of the current of
air which traverses either of the modulating
passages.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 53
" But the sounds of M and N can only be
formed by blocking the current of air which
passes through the mouth, while free passage
is left through the nose. For M the mouth is
shut by the lips ; for N, by application of the
tongue to the palate.
^'Explosive-consonants. The other consonantal
sounds of the English language are produced
by shutting the passage through both nose and
mouth ; and, as it were, forcing the expiratory
vocal current through the obstacle furnished by
the latter, the character of which obstacle gives
each consonant its peculiarity. Thus in produc-
ing the consonants B and P, the mouth is shut by
the lips, which are then forced open in this explo-
sive manner. In T and D, the mouth passage is
suddenly barred by the application of the point
of the tongue to the teeth or to the front part of
the palate ; while in K and G (hard ai in go^ the
middle and back of the tongue are similarly
forced against the palate."
In order to have a clear idea of these words
and of what we are going to say, the reader
will find it very useful to pronounce each sound
of the alphabet, and pay attention to the posi-
tion that his lips and tongue assume.
54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
It appears from this description, that we can
in the first place divide all consonants into two
classes :
1. Those in the pronunciation of which the
current of air is continuous ; H, S, Z, Sh, J, G
soft, Th, L, R, F, V. These are called continu-
ous consonants.
2. Those in the pronunciation of which
the current of air is stopped, either through
the mouth (M, N,) or through both mouth and
nose (B, P, T, D, K, C hard). These are called
momentaneous or explosive consonants.
Now we must make another classification,
more important still, according to the organs,
(lips, teeth, and back palate or throat as the
case may be), which play the principal part in
their utterance. This classification is as
follows :
Labial, P, B, M, F, V, (F, V, properly labio-
dental).
Dental, T, D, Th, N, L, R, S, Z.
Guttural, K, G, (hard).
Palatal, Ch, J.
Besides, we have a classification, not entirely
justifiable, but very common, of soft and hard
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 55
consonants. P, T, C, (as in cost) are called
hard, and B, D, G, (as in go) are called soft,
because with the former the current of air is
checked with some greater strength. H, Ph
(f), Th are called aspirates.
As to the distinction between vowels and
consonants, that given by Professor Whitney
(Oriental and Linguistic Studies, 1 1 Series, p.
281) seems to me the most satisfactory.
" The organs of the lungs and throat furnish
the column of air, the breath or tone ; the
organs of the mouth modify this breath or tone
and give it various individuality.
" Those sounds, in which the material, the
element of tone, predominates, are vowels ;
those in which the other element, the oral mod-
ification, predominates, are consonants ; but
there is no absolute line of division between
the two great classes ; each has its degrees
whereby it approaches the other ; there is a
continuous line of progression from the open-
est and purest vowel to the closest and most
absolute consonant, and a border territory
between, where the sounds are of doubtful or
double character."
56 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
Conformably to this principle, we have sounds
which are classified as semi-vowels, (L and R).
The classification of the consonants, which
we have just given, is very imperfect. This
study of sounds in human speech is one of the
most delicate branches of science, no less inter-
esting to the anatomist, the physiologist, and
the ethnologist, than to the philologist. Hence
the distinctions in sounds are carried to a
degree of subtlety which seems impossible to
one who is not familiar with phonetic studies.
And it is very interesting to investigate the
nature of all the shades of sounds which are to
be heard in all human languages. But this
would far exceed the limits, and alter entirely
the nature, of this work. We must confine
ourselves to the simplest and most elementary
notions, happy if some reader will hereafter
feel inclined to look more closely into the sub-
ject. His praiseworthy curiosity will be satis-
fied, then, by special works, of which there is
no dearth.
From a glance at the classification given
above, we may infer that a close connection
exists between all these sounds ; a slight altera-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 57
tion in the position of the lips, or tongue, or
teeth, produces quite a different sound. Thus,
if we apply the tip of our tongue to the front
of the palate, we utter the sound d ; if we fold
our tongue a little more backward, we have the
sound r. A little more backward still, and we
have the sound /. If we check with our
lips the current of air, we have the sound ^/
if we do the same thing with a little more
strength, we have the sound/. We can thus
understand how easy it is to pass from one
sound to another. It is this physiological
affinity of sounds that makes the changes
which we gee in words possible. That such
changes are not only possible but actual, every
language bears witness. To see how such
changes happen, to discover what principles, if
any, govern such changes, is one of the main
objects of the science of language.
No two persons pronounce in the same man-
ner. As there are not two faces alike, so no
word is pronounced exactly, mathetnatically, in
the same way by two different men. Of course
we do not notice such differences unless they
are strongly marked. The pronunciation of
58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
children, for instance, is quite peculiar, because
their organs of speech are not educated ; we
hear children saying tiss for kiss, tat for cat, fink
lox think, thor lor for. Such differences are
more marked and noticeable with people of
different nations. So a Frenchman does not
say the but ze ; his organs can not be taught to
pronounce th, just as the hardened muscles of
the fingers of an old man cannot, certainly not
without great difHculty, be taught to play
rapidly on the piano. A German says vat for
what, chutche ior judge ; a negro dere for there.
It is true that a French child, brought up
among English-speaking people, would learn
English just as well as the children born of
English parents, and English would be just as
natural to him as French was to his father.
But it is true, also, that if he is brought up
among French-speaking people, his vocal
organs will be educated so as to pronounce
French sounds, and, when he is fully grown up,
they will be unable to pronounce easily and
correctly many sounds which are foreign to
the French language.
And as an individual can learn a foreign Ian-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 59
guage, so a family, a community, an entire
people may learn and adopt a language entirely
different from that of their forefathers. But it
is natural that in the process of adoption the
language adopted should undergo many
changes, so as to adapt itself to differently
educated vocal organs. This is not merely an
hypothesis, but has really happened, and is
happening even to-day. Of course, such
changes do not take place in one day ; they
are brought about slowly, steadily, by causes
which work, not only on individuals, but on
generations. And, what is most important,
the changes are not disorderly and chaotic, as
might be expected, but they obey certain laws,
which it is the work of the linguist to investi-
gate.
We know that French, Italian and Spanish
are languages connected by ties of brotherhood,
and that they all spring from Latin. In other
words, where now French, Italian and Spanish
are spoken, once Latin was spoken. To the
same family belong Provencal, Walachian,
Portuguese and Rumansch.
Now, if we look at French, Italian and Span-
6o THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
ish words, it seems impossible that any law
should govern their changes from Latin. Still
all these changes, however confusing at first
sight, were wrought in obedience to certain
laws which comparative philology has dis-
covered.
For instance, in the evolution of words from
Latin into French, we find three general princi-
ples: 1st. The accent is preserved on the
same syllable as in Latin : although the last
part of the word is suppressed either in pro-
nunciation, or both in pronunciation and spell-
ing. 2nd. The short vowel between two con-
sonants is very often suppressed ; for instance
bonitatem gives bont^, English bounty ; comitem,
French comte, English count ; feritatetn, French
fiertL 3rd. The consonant (whether dental or
guttural or labial) between two vowels is very
often suppressed. This is a very important
principle, and striking changes are effected by
it. We have referred already to maistre and
maitre from inagister. "Securus " gives sdr ;
crudelis gives cruel ; pacare, which means to
calm, to satisfy, gives payer, to pay ; regem
gives roi, king ; legem gives loi, law ; maturus
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 6r
gives mlir, ripe ; imperator gives entpereur,
emperor ; frigidus gives froid, cold ; iocus,
gives j'eu, play ; focus gives feu, fire; paucum
gives peu, few.
Tlie Italian language does not truncate the
Latin words at the end so much as the French
does ; besides Italian preserv'es with more faith-
fulness the consonant between two vowels.
Spanish preserves the ending of words better
than French, sometimes better even than Ital-
ian ; as for the consonant between two vowels,
it does not suppress it but changes it ; c be-
comes^/ / becomes d, and then sometimes v,
t becomes {compa.re paier in Latin) is reflected in English
by /, {father), can we say that this is brought
about by laziness ? There are thousands of
instances, such as these, where the theory of
laziness can not account for the change.
How, then, do we explain these changes ?
Let us look at some facts that happen every
day around us. Very often, we hear Frenchmen
who try to say the, but don't succeed ; they
simply say ze or de, and it is no matter of lazi-
ness generally ; the harder they try, the worse
the result. Likewise, it is not the effect of lazi-
ness, if a German, instead oi judge, says chutche.
What do these facts mean ? They mean, if any
thing, that French and Germans have a diffi-
culty in pronouncing certain sounds, which to
English speaking people are natural and easy ;
and they exert themselves, in their pronuncia-
tion, to adapt those sounds to the particular
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 79
disposition or nature of their organs of speech.
There is, as we have observed already, a real,
although almost imperceptible difference, in
the pronunciation of any two men who speak
the same language even from their childhood.
Such differences grow more distinct if we go
from one province to another; very remarkable
if we go from one people to another. Now
as the Roman dialect was brought to bear upon
and really to crush out of Spain and France
and Italy the languages formerly there spoken,
suppose the English language were brought
in the same way into some province of France.
What would happen ? If it had power enough
and were upheld by favorable circumstances,
as Latin was, very likely the English language
would supplant the dialect that is spoken in
that province at present. But what kind of
English ? The people, in accepting the new
language, would react upon it, would adapt its
sounds to the capabilities of their organs of
speech (capabilities mainly resulting from edu'
cation and hereditary tendencies) and its phrases
to their particular genius. For instance th would
become d ox z; many an n would become
8o THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
strongly nasal ; many sounds, especially of
vowels, which in English are quite indistinct,
would become broader and more distinct. In
fact, by and by, English in that province
would undergo a change not less noticeable
than that which Latin has undergone.
Suppose the same English language should,
in some way, come to be spoken by some
Spanish province ; for instance in South
America. Analogous changes would be
wrought in the English there spoken^ and the
result would not be a language identical with
that brought about in the French province, but
another, peculiarly moulded according to the
nature of the vocal organs and the genius of
the Spanish people.
Now suppose another case. A tribe, for
instance, of Swedes, emigrate and go far, far
away to some little island in the other hemi-
sphere. Suppose that for centuries they are
cut off from any communication with either
Europe or America. What would happen ?
Of course, these people, especially if they find
in the island some other people and
mingle with them, will change their way of
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 8 1
living, of eating and of drinking ; even their phy-
sical features will be strongly modified. But
together with these, no less important changes
would take place in their language. If they
have no writing, no press — which are the
greatest help to check the continual mutability
of languages — it is obvious that after a few
generations, their language will have under-
gone modifications so deep as to be no
longer intelligible to the people they left in the
old country.
Now, in all the cases considered, whether a
new language is, so to speak, imported among a
people, or is brought about by the people
itself, the changes of the language are
due either to differences already existing,
or to changes which the people have under-
gone. In other words, we may say that changes
in language are due to ethnological adaptation,
taking the term ethnological in its widest
meaning as referring not only to differences of
race, but to all the geographical, historical and
climatic modifications which, in the end,
through the action of heredity, bring about also
a difference in the race.
82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
Ethnological adaptation, in my opinion,
explains the changes of languages better than the
theory of laziness. Of course, I repeat, I don't
mean to say that laziness, or rather economy of
time and strength, has nothing to do with the
changing of languages. It has a great deal to do
therewith. But I think that this principle is not
sufficient to explain entirely such changes, and
that even where the principle of laziness is
evidently in action, still its working is subject
to the other and broader principle of ethnologi-
cal adaptation. It happens with language as it
happens with the flora and fauna of a vast
country ; in each province they undergo
some changes according to the position, the
configuration, and the climatic conditions of
that province. Again, it happens with language
as it happens with political institutions, with
mythology, with religion, with music. The
same religion, with a people naturally sensual
and worldly, will fall very soon into a mere
system of superstitious believings and a certain
routine of mechanical performances; while
with a people naturally austere and earnest, it
will long retain its whole purity and sanctity.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 83
Mythology, which is brilliant, gay and poetic
with one branch of people, becomes gloomy,
fierce and stern with another branch of the
same family.
Look at music, which is so near to language ;
how it is altered, how it changes from people
to people. The traveler who crosses the
Alps in Italy listens there to many a song
which he has heard before in Naples ; but how-
changed ! In Naples, they were, if I may say so,
like fireworks of notes and trills, gay, viva-
cious, sparkling as champagne, brilliant as the
Neapolitan sky. In the Alps, among the dark
valleys, beneath the majestic peaks, those
songs have become long, drawling canti-
lines, whence the old brilliancy has disap-
peared, but where there is a deep solemn mel-
ancholy charm, quite in keeping with the sur-
rounding scenery. The same influences which
bear upon the religion, the mythology, the
social customs, the music of a people, bear also
on their language.
Nowadays great changes in languages are
very slow and one might wonder why in
the past they have been more rapid and
84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
of greater significance. We must take into
consideration the great forces which now
are working for the preservation of language,
which of old were not even dreamed of. To-
day peoples are in close communication, even
when their countries lie at wide distances from
each other. It is easier to-day to go from
America to any part of Europe and come back,
than it was, during the middle ages, to go half
way from Paris to Rome. And naturally the
frequent intercourse of peoples who speak the
same language does much for its maintenance.
But the most important agents for the
preservation of language are writing and
the press, aided by a diffusion of common
education. All our tendencies to depart in
conversation from the standard language are
held in. check by our writing, and by the lan-
guage we read every day in papers and books.
The cow boy, who, left alone for years and
years, would develop God knows what kind
of dialect, can learn to spell and pronounce as
correctly as any child in Boston or London, if
he has books and a school within his reach.
It is just the same as with music. If a song
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 85
is not printed, its air will soon change remark-
ably in passing from country to country ; but
once its notes are printed, you may be sure it
will be sung all over the world with more or
less elegance, but with the same air.
The art of printing has received much
praise, and doubtless deserves it well. But
few have observed the great service that
the press renders to language. Without the
press the changes in language would have
gone so far that the modern dialects of
Europe would be, even in the same nation,
more different one from the other, than French
is from English, or German from Italian.
In other words, the intercourse of men
would have become more and more a
difficulty ; civilization would have met in its
way a great and terrible barrier. Without a
press very likely America and England to-day
would not understand each other.
III.
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
WE have seen in the last chapter what the
Indo-European family of languages is.
Two of its seven branches are the Germanic, or
Teutonic, and the Latin. The English language
belongs properly to the Teutonic branch, but,
through historical circumstances, so much
Latin blood, as it were, has been infused into
its body, that it is impossible to study it with
a view only to its Teutonic elements. It is
indispensable to take into consideration the
Latin branch also.
In the English language we find German
words, Italian, French, Greek, Spanish, Latin,
Portuguese, Chinese, Turkish, Arabic, and, in
fact, words from almost all the most important
languages of the world. But, while the others
may be considered as merely adventitious ele-
ments, Anglo-Saxon and Latin constitute the
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 87
real body of the language. Of these two,
Anglo-Saxon is by far the stronger and the
more important. The grammar (that little of
it which has been preserved in the English
language) is pure Anglo-Saxon ; of the vocabu-
lary, the most familiar terms, the most import-
ant, those, in short, without which no language
can subsist, are Anglo-Saxon. Still a great
treasure of words has been poured into the
English language from Latin. About five-
sevenths of the English vocabulary, compre-
hending almost all terms connected with litera-
ture, art, science and in general all the intel-
lectual and political life of English speaking
peoples, are Latin. Of these Latin words, some
have been derived directly from Latin, but the
large majority through a French channel by
means of the Normans. Sometimes a Latin
word was, or still is, used side by side with the
corresponding Anglo-Saxon word. Sometimes
from Latin words other words are formed by
means of Anglo-Saxon suffixes ; sometimes an
Anglo-Saxon word has been modified and prop-
agated with formative elements taken from
the Latin language.
88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
- Y, -ly, -ness, -ful, -less, -ship, -hood, are among
the most important Anglo-Saxon suffixes ; -able,
-ible, -ous, -He, -ance, -ence, -tion, are Latin suf-
fixes. Honor, honorable, honorableness ; love,
lovable, loveableness ; use, useful, usefulness ;
charity, charitable , charitableness ; plenty, plen-
tiful ; sober, sobriety, soberness ; inotion, motion-
less ; direct, direction, directly; amiable, amia-
bility, are a few specimens of the way in which
Anglo-Saxon and Latin are interwoven in the
English language.
J. R. Lowell said that we lay Latin bricks
with the strong mortar of the Anglo-Saxon
language. The simile is at once witty and
true ; and the result of such building is
this marvelous structure which we call the
English language. If we analyze the na-
ture of the bulk of English language, we
find either : ist, a pure Anglo-Saxon word,
both in itsr^(7/and affixes ; for instance, love-ly,
love-li-ness, trust-worthy, trust-ful ; — 2d, or
an Anglo-Saxon word with Latin formative
elements : lov-able, read-able ; — 3d, or a
Latin word with Latin formative elements:
ami-able, correspond-ence, confid-ence, con-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 89
sider-able, etc. ; 4th, or of Latin words with
Anglo-Saxon formative elements, sauc-y,
sauc-i-ly, plenti-ful, honor able-ness, etc. It must
also be noticed that many times we have a
Latin word side by side with its Anglo-Saxon
correspondent :/rwii« and /«/// convention and
meeting ; congregation and flock; pastor and
shepherd ; country and land ; strength a.nd force /
etc.
Very often we have some formations
from an Anglo-Saxon root, and then other
formations from the corresponding Latin root
—corresponding in the meaning, of course.
From trust, we have trust, to trust, trusty, trust-
worthy, trustfid, trustfulness, untrustful, un-
trustfulness, trustworthiness, etc. Moreover,
we have many words formed from the Latin
root fid, which means also to trust — con-
fident, confidence, to confide, diffident, diffi-
dence, perfidy, perfidious, perfidiousness. The
same thing happens with the verb pour
and the Latin root fud, which has the same
meaning: to pour, pouring; infuse, infusion ;
effusion, effusive, effusiveness, confusion, etc.
This interweaving of Latin and Anglo-Saxon
go THE PHILOSOPHY OP WORDS.
elements is the most striking peculiarity of the
English language. It is this which makes of
English the greatest, the strongest, the richest
language in the world, at once adapted to a
swift, lucid expression of the homeliest concep-
tions, as well as to the clear, forcible convey-
ance of the highest scientific thought and of
social and political speculations ; of poetic feel-
ing as well as of commercial and industrial
ideas.
From this brief review of the constitution of
the English language, the great advantage
appears of a knowledge, at least elementary,
of Anglo-Saxon and Latin. Not that he who
knows Anglo-Saxon and Latin, will be, simply
because of that, a powerful writer or an elegant
speaker. That depends on so many mental and
moral qualities that to ascribe it to the knowl-
edge of some dead languages would be simply
ridiculous. But he who knows Anglo-Saxon and
Latin may be sure to have a great advantage
in mastering the English language ; which is no
little reward to his fatigue.
When then we come to look for the etymol-
ogy of an English word, in nine cases out of
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 91
ten we must look either to Anglo-Saxon or
Latin. Some sounds point more toward one lan-
guage than toward the other — th for instance,
indicates the Teutonic origin of the word — but
only a considerable amount of Anglo-Saxon
and Latin lore will lead us with some certainty
in our researches. When we have reached a
Latin or an Anglo-Saxon word, then we can
follow it further back, even to its Indo-Euro-
pean root, which is the furthest point we can
hope to reach.
As for words derived from Latin, we must
take notice of a very important fact. The
majority of English words of Latin origin came
into English through a French channel ;
therefore they have undergone those changes
which Latin words undergo when they become
French. On the other hand some Latin words,
generally literary, ecclesias-tical, or scientific
have been transplanted directly from Latin
into English, without any Gallic modifica-
tion. In looking, then, into the structure
of words of Latin origin we must always bear
in mind the phonetic laws prevailing in the
French language, and especially the fact that a
92 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
Latin consonant between two vowels, tends,
in French, to disappear. We have, for instance,
the words sure, and secure, with their deriva-
tives surety, and security, to assure, to insure, etc.
Both these words are from Latin securus, but
sure came through the French channel, where
the consonant between the two vowels (c) has
disappeared, while secure came directly from
Latin, without any French influence.
Latin securus is a compound word ; the pre-
fix se means out, apart ; cura means care,
trouble ; hence secure or sure, " out of trouble."
This same se we have, for instance, in se-lection,
from the root leg, and the suffix tion. Leg
means to pick, to gather ; hence selection,
to select, to pick out. In the same way
secession from the verb ced, to go, and se, to go
apart. This same verb ced, we have in the
compounds, to recede, to secede, to precede, to
go before {prce, before,) to succeed, to " go
under," "in the place of " another, to proceed,
and all the derivatives : recession, recedent, pre-
cedent, precedence, procession, intercedent, success,
etc.
Let us take the words rule and regulation.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 93
Their meaning is very akin. Both were from
the Latin root reg, to direct. From regvie have
regula, and the Latin regidatio. Regiila, through
loss of the middle consonant, gives normally
rule. In modern French the form rigle, with
the guttural {g^ preserved, came to be only used,
but in old French we meet such forms as riule
and reule. Regulation came to English directly
and its middle consonant was preserved, because
it was not submitted, so to speak, to the French
grinding mill.
The words "decree" and "decretal" are
both to be referred to a Latin decretum,
decree. Decretum is composed from the prefix
de, the root ere, and the suffix of the past,
turn. Cre means to sift ; we have it in tlie
form cri, in the noun cri-brum, sieve ; -brum is
very often employed to denote an instrument
or a place (for instance delu-brum, a place of
purification, a sanctuary ; candela-brum, a candle-
stick). We have the same root in Greek, kri.
Both in Latin and Greek from its primitive ma-
terial meaning of sifting, it came to mean, very
naturally, to select, to examine. From this
root, we have the words cri-tic, criticism, etc.
94 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
Critic then is properly "he who sifts," he who
examines. This root, with the prefix de,
which means out, about, means " to sift out,"
to pick out after examination. Hence decretum
is that which has been " sifted out," the con-
clusion which has been reached. Decretum,
with the usual disappearance of the consonant
between two vowels, has given in Yxe'!\z\\decret
where the t is not pronounced ; and in English
decree. But other words, less common, as
decretal, decretory, came straight from Latin,
with their middle consonant preserved. This
is very often the case with literary or
scientific words, which in the main are taken
from Latin or Greek with a slight modification
of their ending, and without undergoing those
changes which we find in words that are
thoroughly popular. When the people accept
foreign words, they apply to them, as by
instinct, those phonetic laws that govern their
own language. In a certain sense they
nationalize them.
In the same way, from Latin, obcedirc, which
properly meant, to " listen to," we have
French ob^ir and English "obey," in
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 95
which the d, already wanting in French, has
left no trace, and the ending has been fashioned
according to the genius of the English language,
or to be more exact, in analogy with the end-
ing of many other English verbs. But in
French, we have obdissance, ob&sani, while the
Latin d has been preserved in the correspond-
ing English, obedience, obedient.
We would not be correct, however,, were we
to assume that all the English words which pre-
serve certain consonants that in the corre-
sponding French words have disappeared, came
directly into English from Latin. Not a few
of them came through the French channel, but
at a time when the Latin consonant was still
preserved in French. This consonant remained
afterward in English, while in French it subse-
quently disappeared. Thus, we know, for
instance, that obeissance was once in French
ob^dissance.
This fact, that Latin words sometimes do not
undergo all the changes that generally are
observed in the evolutions of Latin words
into French or English, gives rise to the
so-called doublets. Doublets are words which,
96 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
although clad in a different garment, so to
speak, are etymologically one and the same
word. Thus, for instance, the Latin amicabilis
gives rise to the doublets amiable and amicable,
which are properly the same word, with this
difference, that in amiable we have the usual
loss of the consonant between two vowels, (c) ,
while this consonant is preserved in amicable.
Aptitude is the doublet of attitude, from Latin
aptitude.
The Latin sound ca is generally represented
by cha in French, and in the English words
derived from Latin through French ; for
instance calorem gives chaleur, heat ; cahdus,
caldus (through the usual change of al into aii)
gives chaud, warm; campus gives champ, ?ie\d.
But sometimes this ca is preserved ; which
explains such doublets as cavalry and chivalry ;
channel diXid canal ; chariot and cart ; chateau&ndi
castle (Latin castellum) ; to chant and cant, etc.
Other instances of doublets are: envious
and invidious ; due and debt : fact and feat ;
fragile and frail ; guard and ward ; major and
mayor ; mister and master ; naive and native ;
pause and pose ; poor and pauper ; preach and
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 97
predicate ; prosecute and pursue ; regal and
royal ; supplicant and suppliant ; vocal and
vowel.
Let us end this chapter with some other
etymological researches. I hope they will not
prove very dull, and will help us to see more
into the nature of this organ without which
man and all man's faculties would be powerless.
Let us resume the same root ere or cri, which
we have just fallen in with above. This
ropt ere we have also in the form cer. This
phenomenon of the transposition of a vowel, or
of a consonant, especially when such consonant
is r or /, is very common, and it is called
metathesis. From this root, either in its form
cer or ere, we have many words ; for instance,
cer-tain, Latin cer-tus, is that which has been
sifted, that of which we are sure after careful
investigation. Criterion is a Greek word,
formed by the aid of the sufifix -terion, that
is used to denote a place or an instrument ;
it means that by which we judge, we " sift "
something to find out what it is worth. From
this root cer with the re-enforcement of an n,
very common in Latin and Greek, we have the
98 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
verb cer-n-o. This n disappears in the past
cre-vi, cre-tum. Cer-n-o means, of course, " to
ft
sift." From this we have to discern, to pick out,
to see among other things. And from the past
of discerno we have "discreet" which means,
properly, " sifted out," " selected," " examined ";
and in an active sense, " wary," " discriminat-
ing," " prudent." From " discreet" we have
" discretion."
The same phenomenon of re-enforcement
through an n, and of metathesis, we have in
another root, which is at the basis of many
words. The XQo\.star oxster means to " strew."
This very English verb is from the same root.
From ster we have, through a common suffix,
-ula, the word ster-ula,-v^'\\\c\\ through the form
sterla, has given " stella," and means " strewer
.of light," a star. The same root gives the Latin
verb ster-n-o to strew, which makes in the past
participle stra-tum, plural stra-ta. Hence
the Italian strada and the English street, which
means properly strewn. From the same root
we have pro-stra-te, to throw down, to strew ;
TiXidi. prostration; con-ster-n-ate and consternation,
etc. So we see that one and the same root
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 99
gives rise to so different words as star, street,
and consternation.
Who would say that there is the least con-
nection between noun and agnosticism ? Still,
beyond a doubt, these words are sisters, or
cousins at least, and they come from the same
root. We have ah Indo-European root gan or
gna, which means to " know." From this we
have the Sanskrit word na-man for gna-man,
" na-me " ; the Greek gnosis, knowledge ; the
Latin co-gno-sco, to know, no-men for gno-men,
noun ; the English know and noun and name.
And other words still ; for instance, noble is in
Latin no-bilis for gno-bilis, which meant
" worthy of being known," " distinguished." So
igno-ble, no-table, no-te, no-tice, igno-re, igno-
rant, co-gnizance (Latin co-noscentia) recogni-
zance, etc., are all to be referred to that root gna.
Now as to agnosticism, it is a Greek word ;
from gnosis, knowledge, we have gnostic, he
who knows, as from crisis, critic. A in Greek
means not ; agnostic, "he who does not know" ;
agnosticism is the state of mind of the agnostic.
There is a deep meaning in this common
descent of the words noun, nam.e and know
loo THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
from the same root. To give a thing its right
name is to know it ; we can not name it correctly
without knowing it. So in our words we
treasure up all the results of human knowledge.
The only trouble is, that we are too often
satisfied with repeating the words we have
learned in books or heard from other people,
and we are too easily deceived into believing
that we know the things when we scarcely
know the true meaning of the words we use.
Just as physicians often believe they know
what a disease is because they know its Greek
name.
What do we mean when we say " I have
not the least idea of such a thing?" Idea
is really a Greek word, which means an image.
The idea of a thing is properly the image we
have of that thing in our minds. The Greek
word idea is derived from a root vid, which
means to see ; in the Greek v has disap-
peared. We have this same root in Latin :
vid-ere, Greek id-ein, to see. From this root
we have in Greek eidolon, an image, English
idol; and eidullon, English idyl, a little picture
from life. We have in Latin vi-sio, English,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. loi
vision, from vid-sio ; as we have seen
(occa-sion, etc.) d disappears before s. We
have also seen that d before t is changed
into s; thus, if to the root id, we add the sufifix
tor (comp. protec-tor, progeni-tor, etc.) we shall
have is-tor, he who sees, " seer," and istoria is
the tale of him who has seen. Istoria has
given in English, " history."
We have some other familiar words, which,
in spite of appearances, are far distant from
idea, both as to meaning and root : the words
idiot, idiotic, idiotism. All these words come
from the Greek word idios which means "one's
own," private. Idiotes in Greek designated a
citizen who did not partake in the government
of the city, a merely private citizen. Hence
it came to denote one belonging to the lowest
rank of citizens ; hence its present meaning.
Idiom is what is proper, particular to one
language.
A very instructive word is age. Age was
in old French edage, and then through the
usual disappearance of the middle consonant,
eage. Edage comes from Latin aetaticum. (The
sufifix aticum gives usually age in French : stage
102 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
is to be referred to a staticum ; voyage, which
once was viage, comes from viaticum, and this
from via, a way, a journey.) Aetaticum is from
aetas age, which is an abbreviation of aevitas :
compare fo-mentU7n from fovi-mentum, momen-
tum from movimentum, etc. Aevitas is from
aevum, time ; from aevuni we have aeviternus,
which, as aevitas to aetas, was reduced to
aeternus, "lasting," ^'eternal." Thus age and
eternal descend from the same word aevum,
time.
Another very common word is emphatic ; — " I
deny it emphatically." This is a Greek word,
" emphaticbs" from the root pha of the verb
pha-i-no, which means to "shine." hs gnosis from
gno, we have phasis, phase, from pha ; the
phases of the moon are the various succeeding
ways in which the moon seems to shine.
" Emphaticos" in Greek means properly
" shining," " conspicuous." We have slightly
modified this meaning: but our modification
consists simply in this, that we apply to the
mind what once was applied to the eyes.
From this same verb phaino we have the
word phenomenon which is properly the pres-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 103
ent participle of the verb phaino, and means
" that which appears" but outside of scientific
language we reserve the word only to things
which do not appear usually, but are rather
uncommon.
I have mentioned the word con-spic-uous.
Here we have a root which has a wonderful
proHfication. The root, spec, means properly
" to look." Hence we have a great many
words, like specula, observatory, and speculate,
properly to look out from a specula, to con-
template. To prospect, to look forth ; to
inspect, to look in, inspector, inspection ; des-
pise, through French modification, to look
down ; despicable, to be looked down ; despite,
the act of looking down.
Now, to sum up, we have seen many instances
of the march of words, of the development of
their ideal meanings from the material meaning
of their roots. Besides, we have seen that, in
the classification of languages made by the
comparative philologist, there is a great family,
the so-called Indo-European, or Aryan family,
to which the greatest part of the languages
spoken by the most civilized peoples in Asia,
104 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
Europe, and America belong. The English
language belongs to this family, and properly
to its Teutonic branch, but has also taken a great
deal of sinew and blood from Latin source.
Therefore, if we take an English word, we can
follow it backward to that primitive language
which was spoken by our forefathers in
the high plains of Asia, before they
separated, and spread all over Asia, Europe,
and America. Thus it is that in every word
we have not only roots and sufifixes, but im-
portant fragments of the history of our own
race.
And here let us make a little digression.
You know that many people who attempt
etymologies, without caring to inquire whether
there is a science of language or not, have
the hobby of continually referring words to
Hebrew, and pretend to find in this language
the key to explain not only English, but many
other languages. Still, as you have seen, we
have examined many words, and Hebrew we
did not even mention. There are indeed very
few words in all Indo-European languages
whose origin is to be sought in the Hebrew;
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 105
and those are mainly religious words, like Sab-
bath, Pasch, etc. What do we do then with
Hebrew ? Must we do away with it entirely ?
Hebrew belongs to another family of lan-
guages, with which our Aryan tongues have
little to do. By the same process with which
the comparative philologist has classified the
Aryan languages, he has also established
another family, the Semitic, to which Hebrew
belongs. This family is divided into three
branches :
1. Arabic, or southern branch.
2. Hebrew, or middle branch.
3. Aramaic, or northern branch.
Jesus Christ spoke an Aramaic dialect.
The Aryan and the Semitic family differ
widely both in their grammar and dictionary.
The attempts repeatedly made by eminent
philologists to explain their discrepancies and
show some connection between them have thus
far failed.
Beside the Aryan and the Semitic, there are
hundreds and hundreds of other languages,
some of which are spoken by large nations,
like the Chinese, some by a single tribe in the
io6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
lowest degree of humanity. For comparative
philology these languages are not less im-
portant than the Aryan and the Semitic.
Many phenomena of the development
of language are more easily discovered and
more clearly observed in rudimentary languages
than in those which have reached a higher
degree of life. This study is carried on most
actively by missionaries and scientists : but
the materials gathered thus far are not large
enough to allow a satisfactory classification.
Some philologists divide the languages, out-
side of the Semitic and Aryan families, into
about a hundred groups; some in another
number. But it is self-evident that, for the
present, classification is premature.
Just to give the reader a mere hint, we can
hardly say an idea, about the classification of
such languages, we may mention the follow-
ing groups :
A. The Scythian group, which compre-
hends : i. Hungarian ; 2. Turkish; 3. Finnish
and Lappish ; 4. The Samoyed dialects ; 5.
Mongolian dialects ; Tungusian dialects.
B. I. The Dravidian or Tamulic (including
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 107
Tamul, Telegu, Malabar, Canaries). II. The
languages of North-Eastern Asia. III. Japan-
ese. IV. Malay-Polynesian. V. The Cau-
casian dialects (Georgian, etc).
C. South African dialects.
D. I. Chinese. II. The languages of
Farther India (the Siamese, Burmese, Annam-
ese, etc). III. Thibetan.
E. I. Basque. II. The Aboriginal languages
of South America.
Before proceeding to examine other interest-
ing results of the Science of Language, especially
concerning grammar, mythology and ethnology,
let us analyze some more words of the English
language, dividing them into groups marked
by some connection of ideas. We may begin
with some of the most important household
words ; then we shall investigate into the origin
of church, social and political words.
HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
Even for these words which we have been so
accustomed to hear ever since the first days of
our existence, and which we are fain to accept
as natural words, never fancying where they
may come from — even for these words, we can
almost always hunt out a remote origin, and the
reason of their present meaning.
Before all, house, German haus, Gothic husa,
is to be traced to a root sku, which means to
"cover," to "shelter," (of the disappearance of
an initial s, we have numerous instances).
The Romans and Greeks had the words donius
and domos, from a root dam which means to
build, diXid also to "bind." From domus we
have domestic, domesticity.
The word family, French famille, Latin
familia, is from a root dha which means to
settle, to order. The change from dk to f is
according to the phonetic laws.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 109
Father, German vater, Frisian feder,
Anglo-Saxon/ai?if/r7iodar, ha.tm /rater, Greek
frator, Sanskrit bhrdtar, is derived from the
root bharj which means to "carry," to "sup-
port," to "^ guide." Brother, the support, the
guide of the sister. Sister, German sclizi'cstcr,
Anglo-Saxon soustar, Gothic svistar, Sanskrit
svasdr. This svasar has to be reconstructed
into svastar (compare Gothic svistar) from the
root vas, to " live," to " inhabit." Sister, " the
woman who lives under the same roof," " our
companion."
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. m
Husband and wife. Husband is properly a
Scandinavian word, and means the master of
the home {Jius for house). The origin of wife
is as yet obscure.
The origin of bride, Anglo-Saxon bryd, Old
High German /r«^, German braut, like that of
wife, thus far is not ascertained. The second
part of bridegroom has nothing to do with
groom ; it was once written " bredgome," Anglo-
Saxon brydguma, Swedish brudgumme. Old
High German brutegomo, German brdutigam.
The word gome, Anglo-Saxon ^2^;«a, means man,
and is cognate with Latin homo. Bridegroom
means the man of the bride ; the man newly
married. We may observe in passing that
guma and homo, " man," are to be referred, ac-
cording to phonetic laws well established, to
gham, which means " earth," (compare Latin
humus, the soil). The word man, on the con-
trary, is from a root which means " to think."
Spouse, Middle English spuse, French once
espoux and espouse, now ^poux and spouse,
Italian sposo and sposa, are from sponstis,
pledged, betrothed, the past participle of the
verb spondere, to promise, to pledge. Wedding
112 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
is from the Anglo-Saxon wed, to pledge. Nup-
tial is from Latin nub-ere, which meant prop-
erly to veil ; the bride in Rome was covered
with a yellow veil.
Bachelor, Middle English bacheler. Old
French bacheler, French bachelier is from
baccalarius, a farm-servant, a cow-herd : from
baccalia, a herd of cows ; this from bacca, a
cow, a Low Latin form for vacca, a cow.
To marry, French marier, Italian maritare,
is from Latin maritus, husband. Maritus is
connected with mas, maris, " male."
CHURCH WORDS.
Church is in Middle English chirche, chireche,
cherche ; Northern dialects kirk, kirke ; Anglo-
Saxon kerika, kirika. These are to be referred
to the Greek kyriakos, which means " belonging
to the Lord " ; Kyrios is the Lord. Church then
properly means " the house of the Lord."
In the Greek there is another word for
church; ecclesia, from the verb caleo, to call, to
summon; that is "the assembly of the faith-
ful." From this word we have " ecclesiastic,"
" ecclesiastical."
Clergy is from Latin clericus, Greek klericos.
This from cleros, which meant " a portion,"
" an allotment." The priests were called
klericoi, either because they were, so to speak,
a class apart, or rather because they had
" a lot in God's inheritance." And when only
the churchmen knew how to read and write,
114 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
clericus, clerk, became synonymous with
scholar. The word " clerk," then, once con-
veyed an idea of dignity, which gradually
disappeared with the increasing diffusion of
education.
Priest, Middle English preest, Anglo-Saxon
preost. Old French prestre, is a contraction
from the Latin presbyter, Greek presbyteros,
which means properly " elder." In the early
days of the church, the eldest were com-
monly selected to lead in the service of the
church.
Deacon,\^-aJdr\. diaconus, Gr c^Vdiaconos, means
"a servant," a subordinate of the priest.
Congregation is from the Latin word ^rc_§--f;«,
which means flock. Pastor means shepherd.
So when we speak of " a pastor and his congre-
gation," we use exactly the same metaphor as
when we call him " a shepherd," and we speak
of his " flock."
Preacher, to preach, etc. (Middle English,
prechcn, Old French, precher^, are from Latin
prae, " before," before men, in public ; and
dicare to proclaim, connected with diccre to say.
Praedicarc, through the usual loss of the
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. llS
dental between two vowels, gives praeicare,
from which we have normally the Old French
precher. Predicate is from the same root.
Rite is from the Latin ritus, a custom, espec-
ially in religious matters. In Sanskrit we have
riti, a "going," also "way," "usage"; root ri,
" to go." From ritus we have ritual, ritualism,
etc.
Liturgy is from Greek leitourgia, from leitos,
public, ergon, work, service ; " the common ser-
vice " in church.
Layman, laic. Old French lai, Latin laicus,
Greek laicos, from laos, the people ; " pertain-
ing to the people ; " " one of the people at
large," "who does not belong to the caste of
the priests."
Profane, I^atin pro/ames, (rom pro, before, and
fanum, temple ; " he who did not enter or was
not admitted into the church."
'Y^o profess, is from pro, before, and the past
fessus of the Latin verb fateri, to avow, to ac-
knowledge ; to " acknowledge before all," pub-
licly.
Cemetery is the Greek koimeterion, from the
verb koimao, "to sleep," "to rest," and the
Ii6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
suffix terion, which denotes either an instru-
ment or a place. Hence cemetery, " the place
to rest, to sleep." Koimao is allied with keimai ;
root kei, from ki, "to repose," " to rest " ; and
this root is connected with the Latin quies, and
our quiet.
Mortal, immortal, etc., are all to be referred
to a root ;«ar, to "grind down," to "pound,"
to bruise to death.
Soul, Anglo-Saxon sawel and sawol, Gothic
saiwala from saiws, " sea," from a root su, to
" stir," to " toss about." It is not unnatural to
compare our inner nature, tossed by passions
and desires, with a sea stirred up by the gales.
The Latin anima, soul, from which we have
" animal," " animate," " animation," etc., meant
properly " breath," from a root an, " to
breathe." Anemos in Greek means wind.
Spirit is also from Latin spirare, to " breathe."
To the primitive man "breathing" was the
most important, the most striking manifesta-
tion of life.
Paradise meant, originally, a garden, a park,
a pleasure ground ; Greek, parddeisos.
Hell is connected with hole, from the Teu-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 1^7
tonic root Aa/, to hide, to conceal. Infernal
(French, enfer,) is a Latin word, connected with
inferior, and means properly low, " subterran-
ean."
Angel is properly a " messenger " of God. It
is from the Greek angelos, " a messenger."
Gospel is in French Evangile, Italian evangelic
or vangelo, from Greek eu, "well, good," and
angelion, "news." Gospel was once written
God-spel, the spel, the story, the narrative of
God. ■^'
God is not less mysterious in its etymology
than in any other predicate. The connection
between God and good, which has been sug-
gested, has no linguistic argument in its sup-
port. In Latin we have Deus, whence French
Dieu, Italian Dio. Deus for devus, Sanskrit
d^va, is from the root div, "to shine."
Deity, divine and divinity belong to this same
root.
WORDS OF SOCIETY.
Of course it is impossible to gather here,
without transcending by far the limits of
the present worlc, all the words which could be
grouped under this heading. We shall select
only a few of them. First, the word society
itself has a clear etymology. We have in Latin
societas, in French socidt^, which are formed from
socius, an associate. The root is soc, which is
but a doublet of sec or secu, from the Indo-
European sak "to follow." Socms is "he who
follows another," a " companion." Society,
then, means " companionship," " communion of
life." Social, sociality, sociable, socialism, etc.,
belong, of course, to the same root.
We may divide the social relations into two
great groups, relations of sympathy and relations
of antipathy. Sympathy and antipathy are both
Greek words from the root path, to feel. Sym-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 119
pathy {sun, with) to feel with somebody, to feel
as he does, to sympathize with him ; antipathy
{anti, against) to feel against him, aversion to
him. {Aversion, by the way, is from the Latin
a, away, from, and the root vert, of the verb
vertere, to turn.) Words of sympathy: love,
friendship, affection, amiability, etc.
Love, Anglo-Saxon lufu, Sanskrit lobha, is
from a root lubh which means to covet, to desire.
This root has in Latin the form lib, hence liber
which means /r^^, originally " acting at pleas-
ure " ; and liberty, and liberal. Amour, amorous,
amatory, amiable, amiability, etc., come from
Latin, am-or, love. So friend is in Latin amicus,
whence Italian, amico, Spanish amigo, French
ami.
Friend (friendly, friendship, etc.,) was in An-
glo-Saxon freond, which was originally a present
participle of freon, freozan, to love ; freond,
then, means "loving." The root ol freon cor-
responds to Sanskrit /rz, to love. The /"of the
Anglo-Saxon corresponds, according to Grimm's
law, to Sanskrit / .• compare pancha, five ;
pitar, father, etc.
Affection is from the preposition ad, at, " to-
I20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
ward," and the root fac of the verb facere.
(Compare iec from iac, in-jection, pro-jection,
etc.) To affect, then, is to act toward some-
thing or upon something; hence affection, "the
being affected or touched " ; the state of hav-
ing one's feeHngs affected in some way ; bent
or disposition of mind ; feeling.
Dear, Anglo-Saxon deore, German theuer,
whose root is unknown, but whose primitive
meaning seems to have been "expensive" is in
Latin, ca-rus. From this we have to caress,
French caresser, to fondle, to cherish. The
verb cherish itself is only the English form of
the French ch^rir, which comes from carus. We
have noticed already that it is in the nature of
the French language to change the Latin ca
into cha : Latin cat us, cat, French chat ; caminus,
caminata, hearth, French cheminde, English
chimney ; Latin cantare, to sing, French
chanter. In the same way from carus we have
charity and all its derivatives. Now, if we go
further back, we find that Latin cd-rus corre-
sponds to Sanskrit kam-ra, " charming,"
beautiful," from the root kam, " to love."
The verb to cotcrt has a long story. Court,
THE PHIL OSOPH Y OF WORDS. I z i
Latin cars or cohors, was said first of a
yard and especially of a cattleyard, and of the
cattle themselves. Then it came to be applied to
the yards of palaces and people living therein,
to the royal retinue and house — hence the verb
"to court," to practice arts in vogue at court,
to seek favor. Hence the words court-eous,
court-es-an, court-i-er, court-es-y, etc.
Words of antipathy. To hate, Anglo-Saxon
hete, is very likely from a Teutonic root hat
which means to "pursue."
To detest, French detester, is from Latin
detest-ari, which means to execrate, to impre-
cate evil by calling the Gods to witness ; de,
down, and testari, to testify, from testis, " a
witness."
Enemy and enmity are from Latin in-imicus ;
which is from amicus, friend, and in, not.
Rival is a very good specimen of the long
way words go over in their meaning. Rival is
a Latin word, rivalis, which is formed from
rivus, a brook. Rivalis is one who lives, who
has his possessions along a brook. Few branches
of the law have been so long unsettled as the law
regarding the claims of the owners of estates
122 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
when the swelHng and overflowing of rivers
cause not slight alterations in their lands.
Naturally enough rivalis and rivalitas came to
have the meaning of "contestant " and contes-
tation " ; one step further, and we have the
present meaning of rival and rivalry.
Jealous, Old French Jalous, Italian geloso,
Spanish zeloso, Low Latin selosus, are all from
Greek zelos, "zeal." Zelos meant properly
" heat," " ardor," and it stands for zeslos from a
root zes, which means "to boil," "to seethe"
{zes-is, boiling). From these meanings, it is easy
to see the passage to the present meaning of zeal
and zealot, jealous z-xxd jealousy.
Proceeding now to consider other words of
society, we can not omit such words as fash-
ionable, elegant, etc.
Fashionable, of course, is from fashion. Fash-
ion, Old French, faceon, fazon, fashon means
the shape, the make of a thing. It is from the
Latin factio, from the verb fac-ere, to make.
Fashion, then, meant properly nothing else than
the " shape " in which something was made ;
then it was applied to dress, to manners, etc. ;
and one thing or person came to be called
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 123
fashionable when according to the shape or
standard prevailing in society.
Elegant and elegance are both from the prefix
e and the Latin root leg, to choose, to pick out.
Elegance cox^^vsX.'&'vcv "picking out," in "selecting"
the best things. It is a sister-word of e-lec-tion,
a choice, or picking out.
As for society diversions, it would be too
long to enumerate them all, but let us devote
some lines to at least one kind of amusement.
Theatre is a Greek word from the verb thedo,
"to see," and the suffix tron, which usually de-
notes an instrument or a place. Theatre is then
a " place for a sight, "for a view. The same root
we have in theory, properly a " beholding," a
"speculation."
Drama means an action, from the Greek root
dra, to act, to perform ; and ac-tor is he who
acts, who performs.
Tragedy is from the Greek tragodia, from
tragos, a he-goat ; and ddos, a song. In the
feasts of Dionysus (Bacchus, the god of wine)
a song was sung, and then a he-goat, a beast
obnoxious to the vine, was sacrificed to Diony-
sus. The song, which was at first merely lyric.
124 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
was afterward divided into parts and sung by
two men ; then other and still other partakers
were added, so that by and by from that rude
beginning we came to have what we now call
tragedy, whose first meaning was the " song of
the he-goat."
Comedy is also a Greek word from komos, a
banquet, and odos, a song. Comedy, signified
at first songs sung at banquets ; gay and
festive songs. Komos was a banquet at which
the guests lay down, from the same root that
we have in the verb koimao, " to lie down," " to
rest " ; so that in comedy we have really the
same root that we have in cemetery. Strange
fate of words !
Farce is connected with the verb to farce,
Latin fare-ire, to stuff, to cram in. Farce, then,
meant at first "a stuffing"; and that now it
does not contradict its original meaning, I
think not few are ready to admit, especially
after having been obliged to endure for two or *
three hours certain entertainments of the
kind.
The origin of the word Vaudeville seems to
be due to the town of Vaudevire (Val-de-vire)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 125
in Normandy, where Olivier de Basselin, a poet
of the fifteenth century, introduced this kind
of play.
To close this chapter on words of society,
let us look a moment into the titles which we
prefix to our names. Mister, meister, maister,
Old French maistre, are but varieties of mas-
ter, derived, through French, with the usual
loss of the middle consonant, from Latin mag-
ister, which meant properly " much more
greater"; hence the idea of superiority, of
power, of sway.
Mistress, Middle English maistresse, is
formed from master through the French suffix
-esse (Latin -issa, ItsAizn-essa; abb-ess, author-ess,^
doctor-ess). Miss is simply a contraction from
Missis, the common pronunciation of mistress.
Shakespeare : " This is Mistress Anne Page ""
(Merry Wives, i. i. 197) where we now should say
" Miss Anne Page."
Sir or sire, was the despair of the old ety-
mologists. They even wrote it eyre in order
to make it look like the Greek kyrios, a
lord ! — We have the Latin word senior, the
comparative of senex, which means " old " ;
126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
senior, "older." Hence we have the forms
senhor, senker, seigneur, sieur, sire. From the
French sire we have the English sir, which cor-
responds to the French sieur in monsieur (my-
sir), to the Italian signore, to the Spanish sefior
All these titles, as their etymology indicates,
were used at first as a mark of respect to old
age ; afterwards as a mark of respect to every
body.
Madam is a French word : ma-dame, my lady.
" Dame " is from Latin domna, for domina,
mistress.
Damsel, a girl, French demoiselle, Italian
damigella, is to be carried back to a Latin dom-
inicella, a little mistress.
Lord, Middle English louerd, Anglo-Saxon
hlaford, from hlaf, a loaf; ord for weard, a
warden, a keeper, a master ; hence hlaf -ord
{hlaf-weard) loaf-keeper, that is " the master of
the house," the father of the family.
Duke, marquis, count, baron, knight, have all
their origin in the military institutions of
feudalism. Duke is from Latin duc-ere, to
guide, to lead ; "a leader." Marquis, Middle
English markis. Old French markis, marchis,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 127
" the governor of a ' marka, ' " (mark) that is
a border country. The border provinces
(marks) had to be strongly organized, and ready
to repel foreign invasions. Their governor was
therefore a military man, and was called a
" inarquis.''
Count, French comte, is from Latin comitem,
" a companion," from cum, with, and the verb
ire, to go. The " count " was the companion,
the follower of the prince in battle.
Baron means simply " man." In the Neo-
Latin languages it meant generally a man
strong, gallant, noble. We find it also in the
form bar ; for instance in the old Provencal ;
" Le bar non es creat per la femna, mas la
femna per lo baro," " The man was not created
for the woman, but the woman for the man."
Knight corresponds to the German knecht ;
as night to nacht. It meant a " servant," as
knecht does. But it was applied especially to
soldiers and officers who helped, who followed
their captain in the field.
Gentleman, the highest title in a democratic
community, is not at all a democratic word ;
it appeals especially to those principles
128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
of heredity with which democracies are not
friendly. Gentle comes from Latin gens, which
means a clan. Gentleman then means properly a
man who belongs by birth to a certain clan, to
a certain class of society. With the spread of
education, with the diminishing inequality of
fortunes and rights, the etymological meaning of
gentleman has given way to its present and
better meaning. Nobleinan, on the contrary,
followed quite an opposite road. It meant
properly, a man well known, distinguished : but
by virtue of the hereditary principle, and
especially of hereditary transmission of titles,
nobleman was called anybody who belonged to
some particular class, regardless of his personal
claims to be a " distinguished man."
Such is the life of words : some lose their
primitive nobleness, and are, so to speak,
dethroned ; others, following luckily in the track
of modern civilization, are pushed along, and
exalted and ennobled in acccordance with the
evolution of our ideas and the progress of our
social life.
POLITICAL WORDS
Politics, political, etc., are to be referred to
Greek polites, a citizen, irompolis, a city. " City"
is (through French cit/), from Latin citatem, an
abbreviated form of civitatem. (Compare aetas
from aevitas ; momentum from movimentum ;
fomentiim from fovimentum^ Civitatem is
from civis, a citizen : in civis, we have that root
ki, Sanskrit gi, to rest, to live, which we have
ah^eady met in koifnao (whence, comedy, ceme-
tery and quiet').
Citizen is from city ; Middle English citisien,
citizein, citesain. The z (sometimes turned into
s) is a corrupt rendering of the Middle English
symbol 3, which properly means j;/, when occur-
ring before a vowel. The same mistake occurs
in the Scotch names Menzies, Dalziel, miswrit-
ten for Menyies, Dalyiel, as proved by the fre-
quent pronunciation of them according to the
130 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
old spelling. Hence citizen stands for Middle
English citiyn, citiyen, Old French citeain
(compare modern French citoyen) formed from
cit^, or city, by help of the suffix ain, Latin anus.
From civis, a citizen, we have civil " belong-
ing to the city " " polite," " cultivated" ; and
from "civil," to "civilize " and " civilization ".
Town, Middle English toim, meant properly,
inclosure. The Anglo-Saxon tun meant origi-
nally hedge ; hence the verb, tynan, to
" inclose." The meaning recalls to our memory
times when every village had to be a kind of
fortress, had to be inclosed, on account of the
unsettled character of society and the continual
wars.
The same meaning is at the base of the word
ivard, a watching, a protection.
County is a feudal term, and it is connected
with count. "County" was the district over
which the count presided.
Republic means " common-wealth," from res,
" thing," "wealth," dsvA public, " of the people."
Public, Old Latin poblicus, is from Latin
populus, " people " ; contracted from populictis.
Empire is from Latin imperium, " com-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 131
mand," " rule " ; emperor, through French
empereur, from Latin imperator, " commander."
Confederacy, confederation, confederate are
ixox^ con, "with," "together," and/i?,?, "to have."
In Italian the singular of the present of " to
\\z.\t," avere, is b, hi, h (written z\%o ho,hai, ha),
and all the Italian verbs, whether regular or
not, end in the future in b, at, tc ; for instance,
udire, to hear ; udir-b, I shall hear, iidir-hi, udir-h,
etc.
In Spanish we have he, has, ha, (I have, thou
hast, he has) where the h is not pronounced ;
amar, to love, makes ill the future : amar-^, amar-
ds, amar-d, etc ; and so all the Spanish verbs.
In Latin we have ama-bo, " I shall love," which
through comparative analysis, can be shown to
be a compound of the root atn, of the verb am-
are, to love, and the root bhu which means
" to be " ; so that amabo is properly a compound
word and means " I am to love."
We could push this investigation further in
other languages, always with the same result.
We would always find the idea of the future
expressed by the addition of one root to
another.
Let us now turn to the idea of the past.
IS6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
We have in English, / loved. Where does this
mysterious d come from, which works so great
a change in the meaning of our root ? Of
course we can not make any thing out of it, as
long as we consider this word alone. It would
be just as bewildering as to attempt to find the
meaning of " Kittie " without looking at the
other forms of the word. We must inquire,
we must look back and around. We must ac-
cumulate facts upon facts, in order to make our
observations trustworthy.
In order to give reasonable width to our re-
searches, we must recall the classification of
the Indo-European languages, and the position
of English therein. We haVe seen that one of
the most important branches of that family is
the Teutonic, which is divided into three other
branches : I. Scandinavian ; II. High Ger-
man ; III. Low German.
I. To the Scandinavian division belong the
following tongues : i. Icelandic ; 2. Norwegian ;
3. Swedish ; 4. Danish. The old Norwegian,
sometimes also the old Icelandic, is called Old
Norse.
II. To the High German division belong:
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 157
1. Old High German (comprising the Thur-
ingian, Franconian, Swabian, Alsacian, Swiss
and Bavarian dialects) spoken from the begin-
ning of the eighth to the middle of the eleventh
century.
2. The Middle High German, spoken in upper
Germany from the twelfth to the end of the
fifteenth century.
3. Modern High German, spoken from the
end of the fifteenth century to the present
time.
HI. The Low German division compre-
hends :
a. Gothic, the oldest of the Teutonic dialects.
Its oldest record is found in the translation of
the Bible by Bishop Ulphilas (born 318, died
388), a great part of which, however, has per-
ished.
b. Frisian, preserved in some documents of
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and still
spoken in Friesland, along the coasts of the
North Sea, between the Weser and the Elbe,
and in Holstein and Sleswick.
c. Dutch.
d. Flemish.
iS8 THE PHILOSOP-HY OF WORDS.
e. Old Saxon.
/. English.
It follows from such classification, that
in our inquiries into English grammar, we
must first trace back the English words to
their oldest forms in the English language,
then compare them with the corresponding
forms in the other Low German languages,
then in the Scandinavian and High German,
then in the whole Indo-European field. In
order to understand the form / loved, we must,
first of all, take notice of a discovery of com-
parative grammar, that we have so-called strong
verbs and weak verbs.
All strong verbs (to which category belong
the generality of the so-called irregular verbs
in English) originally formed their past tense
simply by repeating\.h.e\.x root. We see that here,
too, the process is very simple. Thus, from
the root bhiig, to " bend," we had the root of
the past, bhug-blmg ; then by shortening the
first part, bhu-blnig ; to this, the personal end-
ing being added, we have the Sanskrit bhu-
bhog-a, which is the past of the root b/uig in
Sanskrit, and means, " I bent." In the same
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 1S9
way in Latin from the root /a//, "cheat," we
have, with slight and normal change of vowel,
the past fe-felU (from fel-fell-i). But in the
course of time these forms were worn out
more and more ; and it became, by analogy, a
rule that the middle consonant disappeared ;
fug, to escape, gave " fug-fug-i ; " " fu-fug-i ; "
" fu-ug-i ; " "fugi;" lescaped ;fac, to make, gave
" fac-fac-i ; " " fa-fac-i ; " fa-ic-i ; " fe-ci " I made.
This same process we can follow in English.
The past of to Ao/d is in Gothic hai-hald ; then
we come to ha-hald, ha-hild, hailed, held ; Old
High German, hei-halt, hi-alt, Modern Ger-
man hielt. The Gothic hait-an, to call,
makes in the past hai-hait. The English hight,
" was called," is the past of the Old English
kat-an, and corresponds to the Gothic hai-hait.
Gothic let-an, to let, past lai-lot. Gothic
laik-an to leap, past lai-laik. The English did
is the past made in the same way of the verb
do. Did was in Old English di-de ; in Old
'S>2iy.or\ de-da ; it corresponds to Latin ^^ de-di"
from " do."
The weak verbs form their past by adding to
their roots the past of the verb "to do." Thus
l6o THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
in Gothic from the verb nasi-an, to save, we
have the past nasi-da which stands for the more
complete form nasi-deda, (I did save) ; in fact,
in plural we find the full form nasi-dediun, we
did save. In Old English this verb is neri-an
and its past is nere-de for nere-dide. We have
also luf-o-de, loved. Loved stands for the
full form, I love-dide, that is, " I did love."
Thus we see that the way of forming the
past of a verb, however mysterious it may
seem now, was at its beginning quite simple.
Either the root was repeated, or the verb do
(in its reduplicate form) was added thereto.
With regard to the change of the meaning of
a word from singular to plural, the evolution has
also been simple and slow; first we had a number,
called dual, to mean tzvo objects ; then we find
traces in some languages of a number denoting
three objects ; finally we reach the plural, sig-
nifying an indefinite quantity of objects. We
can see that the suffixes for the formation of
the plural were more substantial, so to speak,
than they are at present ; even in English we
find suffixes like as, us, instead of a simple s ;
but what those suffixes were properly and what
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. i6i
they meant, thus far, unluckily, has not been
ascertained.
More satisfactory are the explanations of the
origin of genders. The primitive man could
not obtain any notion of gender save from
man and woman, male and female ; and by the
process which is common to uncivilized people
and to children of transferring to every thing
in the world their own conceptions and their
own life, men came to represent to themselves
even inanimate objects as clad with a certain
personality, and accordingly these objects were
distinguished in gender, whether they were
conceived as male or female beings. This
process applied at first only to some inanimate
objects, to those that were nearest, or in any
way most important. By and by, through
analogy, it was applied to all things in the
world. Analogy rested on the meaning of
words or, especially, on their endings ; but
when, in the wear and tear of language, the
termination was worn out wholly or partly,
even this thread to distinction of genders
became lost, and we arrive at such a state of
things as we find with German genders.
i62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
where, to say the least, confusion reigns.
In this respect English is far more advanced
and logical than any other of the leading
languages. In English the grammatical dis-
tinction of gender has been almost entirely
suppressed ; the idea of gender is conveyed
simply by the meaning of the word itself.
Only this process has perhaps been carried too
far, and sometimes we are obliged to resort to
that clumsy ^^ and shei^' he-goat," " she-goat ").
" It is an idiom," Marsh says, "common to the
Scandinavians and the English, which in
awkwardness surpasses any thing to be met
with in any other speech."
It remains now to look at those various
suffixes which enter into the formation of
nouns and adjectives and adverbs.
We have already had occasion to see that
it is a particular advantage of the English
language to be able to draw suffixes from two
main sources: from the Teutonic and from
the Latin branch of the Indo-European fam-
ily.
Suffixes were once independent words, which
by being added to principal roots to modify
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 163
their meaning, gradually lost their inde-
pendence and became mere signs of relation,
and were employed as forinative elements.
Unluckily this process of disintegration began
so long ago that in many cases it is, for the
present at least, impossible to find out what
their original meaning was. Some of them,
however, we can easily trace back to inde-
pendent words with a specific meaning. The
suffix ly, for instance, was in Old English lie,
Gothic /«'/^j, and meant properly /z'/^^.- — strong-ly
(strong-like), man-ly (man-like). In many cases
we have the full form like (war-like, dove-like).
The suffix wise is identical with the substantive
wise; otherwise (in another wise, mode),
nowise, likewise.
Dom, Old English dom, German thuin,
means authority, judgment, dominion :^thral-
dom, wisdom, dukedom, kingdom.
Fare means way, course : — thorough-fare,
welfare.
Hood, head (Old English hdd, state, rank,
character) ; manhood, childhood, godhead,
maidenhead.
Rick (Old English rice, power, dominion),
164 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
bishoprick ; Old English kinerick^kine-riche,
kine=royal.
Ship (Old English scipe, scepe=sha.pe, man-
ner, quality), friendship, lordship, hardship.
Wright (Old English wyrtha, wrihte, work-
man), wheelwright, playwright.
Fold (Old English feald, fold) ; twofold,
manifold.
Ful (Old English ful, full), hateful, wilful
(Old English willesful).
Less (Old English leas, Gothic laus^, " loose
"from " ; it has no connection with less, the
comparative of little : — fearless, joyless, guilt-
less.
Some (Old English sum. Old High German
sam, same, like), fulsome, irksome, wholesome,
etc.
For the suffixes derived from the Romance
languages, generally we can do nothing more
than retrace them to their Latin form, and in
many cases to Sanskrit, Greek, and other
languages akin. But very seldom can we show
what their primitive form was and what their
meaning. A satisfactory enumeration and
analysis of these suffixes can be found in
l^HE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 165
Morris's " Historical Outlines of English
Accidence," to which the reader is referred.
Thus, to sum up this chapter, we have seen
that the idea of grammar, which we owe to the
science of language, is by far larger and higher
than that which is commonly accepted. Gram-
mar is the study of the means by which sounds
with a merely general meaning (commonly
called roots) are brought to express all the
relations and peculiarities of our thoughts.
These means are not the same all over the
world : they differ widely in all languages. In,
some languages (the monosyllabic) the roots
are simply put one after the other, their general
meaning being modified by their collocation.
In other languages (the agglutinative) two
or more roots are put together, but in such a
way as to preserve the principal root unaltered.
Other and more complicated languages (the
inflectional) mould together in one body their
predicative and demonstrative roots.
This distinction however is not so absolute
and iron-bound in nature as we might imagine.
There is a gradual ascendance from the first to
the last type of languages, and as our researches
i66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
in the field of monosyllabic and agglutinative
languages make headway, every thing seems to
point out that new links will be found which
will show unmistakably a continuous con-
catenation in the development of the various
human languages ; we have traces of agglu-
tination in the monosyllabic languages ; traces
of monosyllabism and inflection in the agglu-
tinative ; and traces of agglutination in the
inflectional languages. In fact, in nowise is it
possible to explain the complex constitution
of the inflectional languages, save by admitting
that they have developed slowly, through secular
improvements and the. experience of genera-
tions, from the humblest stages of speech. All
analogies point to the same gradual develop-
ment in language, as we find in the fauna, the
flora, the suns, and all things in the universe.
The formation of dual and plural numbers,,
the distinction of persons and genders, the
formation of the past and future tenses, appear
to be the result of very simple processes, and
quite analogous with those going on under our
own eyes in the most imperfect and rude
tongues of men. The progress of language, it
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. ■i.&l
may be useful to repeat it, has been similar to
the development of mathematics. It began
from the humblest origin. That day, when a
man pointing out one finger, and then another,
gained the conception of both fingers together,
witnessed a great step. When the human
mind became able to have the conception
of the number two, an abyss was bridged
over. It was then made possible to go to the
conception of three, and then of four, and so
on, until, by and by, with the accumulated
experience of centuries, a system of numeration
was wrought out, and arithmetic and algebra,
and the wonders of abstract calculations which
weigh the stars and measure the unseen. The
marvelous speculations of Kepler and Newton,
not less than the winged words of Homer and
the language which clothes the fiery thoughts
of Shakespeare and Dante, were developed by
degrees, slowly, through the course of centuries,
from such imperfect and rudimentary elements
of speech as fall now-a-days from the uncouth
lips of the savage.
Such is the idea of language for which we
are indebted to the linguistic science.
1 68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
I suppose that now the reader may feel
somewhat interested to know how this science
began, and how it has been developed. A brief
sketch of its history follows, which has been
purposely delayed.
V.
OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE
OF LANGUAGE.
THE science of language is one of the
youngest sciences. It is hardly one
century old. Before that a considerable
amount of speculation, rather than of investiga-
tion, had been devoted to language. But those
wandering and fragmentary pursuits could
hardly deserve the name of science.
In the history of European culture, the first
noteworthy observations on language we meet
with in the Greek philosophers. Greek
philosophy, which turned its powerful eye on
every thing in the world, could not let such an
important part of our life as language go un-
observed. The attainments, however, were
not very great. Plato and Aristotle knew the
distinction of nouns and verbs, of conjunctions
and articles. But their analysis of language
did not go further than that. The great work-
lyo THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
shop in which language was studied and
analyzed, and grammar was made as complete,
in the main, as that which we study in our day,
was the school of the Alexandrian critics.
Alexandria, in Egypt, as it is well known,
was for some time a great centre of learning.
Eastern and western knowledge met there, and
were submitted to searching criticism. One of
the most prominent works of the Alexandrian
savants was the diligent study and editing of
the great masterpieces of Greek literature, and
especially of the Homeric poems. Such work,
of course, could not be done without a good
deal of philological investigations. They were
the first to divide language into those parts
(nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) which
we now study in our grammars. But although
they worked out all the materials of a grammar,
still they did not give us a complete and
systematic grammar of the Greek language.
The first Greek grammar is due to Dionysius
Thrax, formerly a pupil in Alexandria, and
afterward a teacher of Greek in Rome. In
order to help his pupils, he wrote out in a
systematic way those elements of philological
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 171
knowledge which the Alexandrian critics had
elaborated. His grammar is still in existence,
and the grammars which we study in our
schools differ from that only in some acces-
sories ; in the main they are merely repetitions
of the work of Dionysius Thrax. The grammar
of Dionysius, as well as our scholastic grammars,
was merely practical and empirical. It had
nothing to do with the historico-comparative
grammar of which we have spoken in the pre-
ceding chapter. But poor as that grammar
was, it is sad to think that it has been handed
down for nearly two thousand years and
whipped into millions of poor boys, without
receiving a single improvement ; rather, with
the addition of occasional blunders, arising out
of misinterpretation of the original. It is a
fact' which shows what a difificult subject
language is to deal with, and at the same time
teaches us some moderation in the appreciation
of our mental powers.
In time an event occurred which helped, or
at least should have fostered in a great measure,
a scientific knowledge of language ; I mean the
advent of Christianity. In the first place,
172 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
Christianity, by teaching that all men are
brethren, induced civilized peoples, such as
Greeks and Romans, to pay more attention to
the life and also to the language of their neigh-
bors, whom they had thus far despised as bar-
barians. Besides, the missionary work under-
taken by Christianity made the study of a great
many languages necessary. A knowledge of
different languages, and an implied assumption
that the language of a poor, uncultivated
people is just as worthy of attention as that of
the peoples most cultivated — these two facts
are at the bottom of a true science of lan-
guage.
It is to be lamented, however, that such
favorable tendencies were marred by a singular
prejudice. People, in their zeal for the new
religion, easily overshot the mark : they were
prone to deny Roman and Greek civilization
entirely, and to attribute to the Jewish nation
an importance which facts by no means
justified. Deeply impressed by the connection
of Semitic civilization with Christianity, they
saw nothing in the world but offshoots of that
civilization, no important fact or legend but what
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 173
was connected with Hebrew, and in the same way
in every language an offspring of the Hebrew
tongue. Now that we have seen how linguistic
researches are pursued, and what is the true
position of Hebrew in respect to the other
languages, we can easily understand how
absurd and misleading such opinions were.
Still they held on for centuries, and years and
years of painful work and an immense amount
of ingenuity were spent in useless endeavors to
prove that Latin, Greek and all languages
known were derived from Hebrew. St. Ger-
ome (quoted by M. Miiller) says: "The whole
of antiquity affirms that Hebrew, in which the
Old Testament is written, was the beginning of
all human speech." They started from the fact
that the Old Testament was the most ancient
book, and was written in Hebrew ; as language
had been revealed directly to man by God,
and the Old Testament is a book divinely
inspired, its language, Hebrew, must necessarily
be the revealed language, the primitive language
of mankind. In the sixteenth century an Ital-
ian scholar P. J. Giambullari, one of the most
learned men of his age (and a very cultivated
174 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
age it was), wrote a book to prove that Italian
is to be derived from Hebrew. Some people
who had good sense enough to see the absurd-
ity of such theories, revolted against them,
but it was only to alight upon others not less
wild and fantastic. They denied, for instance,
that Italian or French could be derived from
Hebrew, but instead of setting to work to
find out from what language they had really
come, they simply argued that Italian and French
not being derived from Hebrew, Hebrew could
not have been the primitive language of man-
kind. Therefore they looked around to find out
which language had been the primitive one ;
being convinced that this question once settled,
the origin of all languages would be explained
by itself.
Of course it was understood that the
primitive language was the language spoken by
Adam. A Spanish gentleman claimed that
Basque was the language spoken by Adam.
Goropius, in a work published at Antwerp in
1580, proved that Dutch was the language
spoken in Paradise ! Andr6 Kempe maintains
that God spoke to Adam in Swedish, Adam
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 175
answered in Danish, and the serpent spoke to
Eve in French.
It is indeed a good lesson to all of us to see
men of great learning, animated by the best
intentions, wandering unconsciously so far
away from truth.
We must come down to the last century in
order to find a ray of light that promises to dis-
perse the darkness which still involves lan-
guage in an impenetrable mystery.
Leibnitz, the great philosopher, mathemati-
cian and scholar, was the first to perceive the
necessity of studying languages as any other
branch of science, that is, the necessity of start-
ing from facts and observations. He was the
first to suggest that missionaries and students
were supplied with a list of the most common and
most important words, and invited to write the
translation of those words in every language
they came across. This was the first rational
step toward the foundation of a science of lan-
guage.
Katherine, the Empress of Russia, deserves
not a little credit for the help she brought to
this science, then in its cradle. Russian ambas-
176 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
sadors were charged with gathering linguistic
materials from all the world. She sent to them
a list of words which had to be translated into
the languages of the peoples to whom they
were accredited. Washington himself, in order
to please the empress, sent her list of words to
all governors and generals of the United States
enjoining them to supply the equivalents from
the American dialects. She worked herself
personally at the compilation of a comparative
dictionary, whose first volume was published in
1787, containing a list of 285 words translated
into fifty-one European and one hundred and
forty-nine Asiatic languages.
Hervas y Pandura, a Jesuit of immense
learning, collected specimens of more than three
hundred languages, and wrote more than forty
grammars. He was the first to notice that, in
linguistic comparisons, grammars are to be
more looked at and thought of than diction-
aries. He saw that Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac
and Arabic are only dialects of the same family
— the Semitic. He classified the Malaic and
Polynesian languages, and discovered many
analogies between Sanskrit and Greek.
7^HE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 177
These were good beginnings indeed ; still,
amidst the confusion which seemed to be
brought about by the increasing collections of
materials, it is hard to tell what could have
come out of such researches, but for a
fact, to which really the beginning of
the science of language is to be referred.
This fact is the discovery of Sanskrit.
Sanskrit was the language of ancient India.
The modern dialects of India stand in the same
relation to it as Italian and French to Latin.
And as Latin has been for a long time the lan-
guage of the Church, so Sanskrit remained the
language of the Brahmins, even after it had
ceased to be a living language.
That there was in the far east a language of
an admirable grammatical structure, and that
many of its words were not much different from
the corresponding words in Latin and Greek,
had often been reported bj' travelers.
Filippo Sassetti, an Italian scholar and mer-
chant, had lived in Goa from 1581 to 1588. In
a series of letters where he describes his eastern
travels and the wonderful things he had seen,
he tells us that there was in India a literary Ian-
178 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
guage, called "lingua Sanscruta," which was
learned by children just as we do Latin an'd
Greek. That language, he says, has many
words and particularly some numerals, like 6,
7, 8, 9, quite similai* to the Italian.
Twenty years later (1606) another Italian,
the Jesuit Roberto de' Nobili, went to India,
and in order to preach more successfully the
Christian faith, he devised to present himself
as a Brahmin among the Brahmins. To
that effect, he shut up himself for years and
succeeded in mastering Sanskrit and some
of the spoken dialects of India. He sent to
Rome detailed relations of the language and
civilization he had discovered ; but Roman
scholars and theologians failed to appreciate
the importance of this information.
No great step was made toward a better know-
ledge of Indian lore until more than a century
and a half afterward. In 1768 the Pfere Coeur-
doux, who was a missionary in India, wrote to
the French Academy " de Belles-lettres et In-
scriptions " : " Where does it come from that in
Sanskrit there are many words that are common
with Latin and Greek, particularly with Greek ? "
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
179
He goes on quoting many instances of such
affinities as deva and deus, God ; ganitam and
genitum, generated ; ganu and genu, knee ; vi-
dhava (from vi, without, and dhava, man) and
vidua, widow ; na and non, not ; maddhyas
and medius, middle ; dattam and datum, given ;
danam and donum, gift ; etc. He compares the
present indicative and subjunctive of the verb
" to be " in Sanskrit and Latin.
Sanskrit.
Latin.
Sansk
asmi
sum
syam
asi
es
syas
asti
est
syat
smas
sumus
syama
stha
estis
syata
santi
sunt
santu
Latin.
sim
sis
sit
sim us
sitis
sint.
The letter of the P^re Coeurdoux is indeed a
remarkable monument of scientific penetration,
especially when we consider that it was writ-
ten more than one hundred years ago (1768).
In 1783 Sir William Jones founded in Cal-
cutta the " Society for inquiring into the his-
tory and antiquities, the arts, sciences and lit-
l8o THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
erature of Asia," and in a speech before this
society, in 1786, he declared that, " Whatever
its antiquity, Sanskrit was a language of most
wonderful structure, more perfect than the
Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more
exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to
both of them a strong affinity. No philologist
would examine the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin
without believing them to have sprung from
some common source, which, perhaps, no longer
exists. There is a similar reason, though not
quite so forcible, for supposing that both the
Gothic and Celtic had the same origin with
Sanskrit. The Old Persian may be added to
the same family."
These were very pregnant words. The atten-
tion of the scholars was turned to the east,
whence a new light seemed to be rising. En-
glish ofificers and merchants with a scientific
tendency, as well as European scholars, began to
study Sanskrit and other oriental languages
with a new vigor and a critical mind.
The great philological importance of San-
skrit lies in this fact, that it affords a new term
of comparison for Latin and Greek. Once it
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. l8l
was customary to explain Greek words with
Latin words, and vice versa ; but, as Greek is
not derived from Latin more than Latin is de-
rived from Greek, there was no firm, solid
ground for such comparisons. It was impossible
to tell when they were right or when they were
wrong. Sanskrit gave a third term of com-
parison; the table, to put it in a material
way, received a new leg and was made to
stand.
Besides, the structure of Sanskrit is such that
it is far easier to look into the nature and com-
position of its words than into those of Latin and
Greek. Again, such analysis had already been
carried to a great minuteness by Indian gram-
marians, so that the way lay open before Euro-
pean scholars.
In 1808 Frederic Schlegel, the German poet
and scholar, published his little book, " Ueber
die Sprache undWeisheit der Indien'" (on the
language and wisdom of the Indies), where he
boldly faced the conclusions that had to be de-
rived from the study of Sanskrit, and was the
first to see that the languages of India, Persia,
Greece, Italy, and Germany belonged to one
1 82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
and the same family, which he called the Indo-
Germanic family of languages.
The work of Schlegel marks a revolution in
the study of the science of language. Since
its publication the life and success of this
science have been assured.
The ideas brought forth by Schlegel were
taken up by the scholars of all the world, par-
ticularly in Germany ; and laborious investiga-
tions were begun and carried on which con-
verted the almost prophetic divination of
Schlegel into absolute certainty, and his
glimpse of a new horizon into broad daylight.
The work of Schlegel, M. Miiller says, " was
like the wand of a magician. It pointed out
the place where a mine should be opened ; and
it was not long before some of the most distin-
guished scholars of the day began to sink their
shafts and raise the ore."
The first great product of minute and strictly
scientific researches was the work of Francis
Bopp.
Francis Bopp was born in Mayence the 14th
dayof September, 1791. He studied the clas-
sical languages in Aschaftenburg, and, led by a
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 183
strong desire of mastering the Eastern lan-
guages, went to Paris, where he remained from
1812 to 1816. For four years the quiet Ger-
man shut himself up to study Sanskrit, Persian,
Arabic, and Hebrew. The war that was raging
all around him, throwing all Europe into con-
fusion and convulsion, did not touch this ex-
traordinary youth in the least. At the end
of four years he published a comparison of
the Sanskrit system of conjugation with that of
Latin, Greek, Persian, and German. He went
afterwards to London, and in 1822 to Berlin to
teach oriental languages in that famous univer-
sity.
From 1826 to 1833 he toiled on unremit-
tingly with his studies of comparative gram-
mar, and in 1833 he began the publication of
his ' Comparative grammar of Sanskrit,
Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic and
German."
This work which was finished only twenty
years after in 1852, is a monument in the his-
tory of the science of language. The brother-
hood of the Indo-European languages, which
by Schlegel had been divined, here stands clear
1 84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
and undoubtable before our eyes. The pur-
pose of this work is clearly stated by the
author in his preface : " I contemplate in
this work a description of the comparative
organization of the Indo-European languages,
comprehending all the features of their
relationship, and an inquiry into their
physical and mechanical laws, and the origin
of the forms which distinguished their gram-
matical relations. One point alone I shall leave
untouched — the secret of the roots, or the
foundation of the nomenclature of the primary
ideas. I shall not investigate, for example, why
the root ' i ' signifies ' go ' and not ' stand ; ' why
the combination of sounds ' sta ' or ' stha ' signi-
fies 'stand ' and not ' go.'
In the work of Bopp we have not only an
immense amount of linguistic researches, but,
what is even more important, we have a great
model of the method by which such researches
are to be pursued. All the work which has
been done afterwards in the field of the science
of language, has been mainly in the foot-steps
of Bopp and in the light of his method, which
is at once comparative and historical. Bopp
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 185
was fortunate enough to live to see the results
of his own work ; to see hosts of disciples
undertake with youthful ardor and unremit-
ting diligence the cultivation of that field in
which he had been so great a pioneer. He
was called the fatherof the science of language,
and he fully deserved the title. He died the
23d of October, 1866, beloved by all who knew
him, honored by the scholars of the whole
world.
It would transcend the limits and the inten-
tions of this chapter, if I had even to mention
here the most important works which we owe
to the successors of Bopp. The amount of
lore accumulated is enormous ; the greatest
nations, England, France, Germany, Italy, and
America took up the new science with admira-
ble enthusiasm ; but it is only fair to admit that
Germany is the leader. Germany may be called
the fatherland of linguistic lore.
What Bopp did for the Indo-European lan-
guages in general, Jacob Grimm did especially
for the German branch, with his great German
grammar (Deutsche Grammatik, 18 19-1837.)
Other scholars, conspicuous among them Eu-
l86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
g^ne Burnouf, founded the Zend philology, while
Frederick Diez, with his " Komparative Gram-
mar " (1836), and his " Comparative dictionary "
(1853), created the comparative philology of
the new Latin or Romance languages.
Prichard, Zeuss and Stokes did the same for
the Celtic dialects ; Miklosich and Schleicher
for the Slavonic tongues ; Curtius, Corssen and
a phalanx of others for the classical languages;
Gesenius, Ewald, Olshausen, Renan for the
Semitic family.
With the same enthusiasm and scientific
vigor other scholars are working at less perfect
but not less important languages which belong
to the agglutinative and monosyllabic families.
Those who talk on glibly about words and
their origin, should at least take the trouble to
know that there is a science which has made of
that subject a special study. Those who talk
about diseases and pretend to cure them with-
out caring to know what the science of medi-
cine has to say about them, are called quacks.
Is it unjust if manipulators of lunatic etymolo-
gies are dealt with in the same way ?
Strange as it is, this science, which already
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 187
has attained such great results and changed
entirely our views about language, has not
as yet a name agreed upon by all scholars.
Some call it " linguistic," and some " compara-
tive philology," some " glottology," some the
" science of language." The last two names
are the best, as linguistic and comparative
philology are rather misleading. In the course
of this book we have sometimes adopted the
term " comparative philology," because it seems
more popular in England and America. We
must not, however, confuse the science of lan-
guage with philology. " Philology " is now
applied in a very wide meaning : we call
Roman, Greek, Indian philology the study of
the " life " of the Romans, the Greeks, and the
Indians ; the study of their language, their
literature, their religion, their art, their phil-
osophy. The object of the science of language,
on the contrary, is only language. This is its
ultimate aim, while, for the philologist, lan-
guage is only a means in order to understand
literature, and the other manifestations of civil-
ized life. The linguist studies the most
humble dialects, with the same care as the most
l88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
noble tongues — the philologist studies only
those languages whose literature is most emi-
nent and artistic. Philology is an aristocratic
science, while before the science of language
every language is entitled to be studied as care-
fully as any other. Schleicher compares the
linguist to a botanist, the philologist to a
gardener. The botanist must be acquainted
with all vegetable organisms, with their struc-
ture and the laws of their development ; but
the use of the plants, their practical or aesthetic
value is nothing to him ; the most beautiful
roses, the most gorgeous Japan lilies interest
him no more than the most obscure weeds.
The gardener cares, above all, for the useful-
ness, the beauty, the color,, the perfume of
plants. He disdains the plants which have no
practical or aesthetic value. If he cares to be
acquainted with their structure and develop-
ment, it is only for practical reasons. The
same does the philologist : language for him is
only a subordinate thing, only a means to get
at other things, literature, art, etc., while the
linguist does not look beyond the natural
phenomenon, which is language.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 189
We have thus seen what the science of lan-
guage is ; with what methods it proceeds in its
investigations ; how it has found the apparent
confusion of languages and words to be ruled
by certain laws not less than any other part of
this universe ; we have observed how it dissects
words, compares grammars, and studies the
affinities and diversities of languages ; we have
seen how little language was studied and its
nature completely misunderstood for centuries ;
how the discovery and study of Sanskrit,
not yet one hundred years ago, made a science
of language possible ; and how this science was
worked out and carried to a high degree of per-
fection duringthe last fifty years. We can now
more safely approach an important question
which once used to be treated at the begin-
ning of every book on languages, and dis-
cussed before any analytical investigation was
undertaken — the question of the origin of lan-
guage.
VI.
THE QUESTION OF THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.
THIS question is so important, the religious,
historical and anthropologic problems
connected with its solution are so great, that
we can not wonder that it has been taken up and
ventilated, even in the early blossoming of
human culture, and long before any reasonable
foundation had been laid of a science of lan-
guage. Nay, the more involved and myster-
ious appeared the nature of language, the more
prone philosophers were to speculate about its
origin. Thus we find, for instance, that none of
the great thinkers to whom Greek philosophy is
indebted for its loftiest flights, left this prob-
lem untouched. They could not, even if they
would, because the process of language is too
intimately linked with the process of reason, to
make it possible to inquire into the nature of
the latter without paying the former any con-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 191
sideration. The opinions of Greek philosophers
may be mainly divided into two classes ; some
asserted that language is a thing of nature, i. e.,
that there is a natural and necessary connection
between a thing and its name. Others afifirmed
that language is purely conventional ; that a
certain thing had received a certain name
merely because it had pleased men to call it so.
The first opinion we may safely say is wrong.
Since nature is universal, if there were any nat-
ural necessity why a horse must be called a
"horse," how is it that it has different
names with different peoples ? As for the sec-
ond opinion, it is to be observed, that it had
only a negative value, 'inasmuch as it discarded
any natural and necessary link between an
object and its name. But here its merits end ;
if we ask, how then things came to have their
names, the authors of this theory do not give
any answer, or if they try to give it, it is
simply to stumble about into vague and base-
less suppositions.
Besides, both of these theories were a priori
constructions ; they had not been reached
through well ascertained facts, but were
192 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
simply the offshoot of subjective and abstract
speculations. The linguistic theories of Greek
philosophers bore the same weight of scientific
truth as the theories of the geographers of old
about the form of the earth, the existence or
non existence of people at the antipodes, etc.
Those theories might have been either right or
wrong ; but how could we tell which, until bold
adventurers went round the earth and reported
what the facts actually were? Modern lin-
guists did for the science of language exactly
what the early navigators did for geography.
They brought to our knowledge the actual
facts, thus enabling us to test the theories of
the ancients and to formulate new ones, to say
the least, not so distant from truth.
Before proceeding to inquire what light glot-
tology has thrown upon the origin of language,
let us remember that, outside the pale of meta-
physics, we have two kinds of facts to deal
with, physical and historical. When it is a
question of a fact of the former kind, for in-
stance of the existence of men at the anti-
podes, there is no other way of ascertain-
ing the truth than by taking actual and
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 193
physical cognizance of it. For the ultimate
proof of a physical fact we must resort
to the testimony of our senses. But where
it is a question of historical facts, we can
not have such direct evidence ; we can only
from other historical facts and circumstances
gather an inductive conclusion about their hav-
ing or not having taken place, and in one way
rather than in another. That once there was in
Rome a man whose name was Julius Caesar, that
this man had been a great general, that he was
killed by a handful of conspirators, all this we
gather from historical circumstances. We
have not seen him, we never shall see him ; still
we are as sure of his having existed as we are
of the existence of another great general who
was called Napoleon the First. But that that
Roman general really partook in a conspiracy
led by one Catilina, and that one of his murder-
ers killed himself, and before dying exclaimed :
" O Virtue, thou art but a name ! " of all this we
are not so sure as of the existence of Csesar,
because the historical proofs are not so strong
as in the former case. We are sure of Rome
having been once the capital of a great empire.
194 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
but we are not so sure, and it is impossible for
us to ascertain the truth, as to how Rome was
founded and by whom.
Whatever idea we may hold about the origin
of language, we can not possibly hope to have a
direct, sensuous proof of this fact, but merely
an inductive one, just as of any historical fact.
And in order to arrive at it, we must assume a
postulatum which is the foundation of all his-
torical researches : — that the natural laws (both
of mind and body) which now govern our life,
have always governed human life since its
beginning. Should we deny this postulatum
(but nobody does and nobody can), we should
give up in despair all hope of acquiring knowl-
edge and any idea of culture.
The consequence is that in order to analyze
and explain historical facts we must look at
what happens in the present day. As the geol-
ogist explains the formation of the earth by the
laws which even now govern its development,
the historian explains the facts of the past by
the laws and criterions which preside over the
events of to-day. In the present is the key of
the past.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 19S
So it is that the best way to reach a proba-
ble opinion of how language originated in
antiquity, is to study how language is
formed nowadays around us. This we can
only observe with our children, and with some
tribes in the lowest state of savagery. Let us
begin by children. Of course the case is not
exactly the saifle as with our ancient, speech-
less forefathers, inasmuch as children are sur-
rounded by people who speak,and are willing
to teach them their own language. Neverthe-
less some observations thus gathered will
supply a clue, so to speak, by which we may
conjecture how languages were formed in the
remote ages.
Sayce quotes an experiment of Taine, the
French savant, which is so interesting that I
ask permission to report it in extenso.
The experiment was with one of Taine's
children, a little girl, of whom he notes that
" the progress of the vocal organs goes on just
like that of the limbs ; the child learns to emit
such or such a sound as it learns to turn its
head or its eyes — that is to say, by gropings and
repeated attempts. ... At about three and a
196 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
half months, in the country, she was placed on a
carpet in the garden ; lying there on her back
or stomach for hours together, she kept mov-
ing about her four limbs, and uttering a number
of cries and different exclamations, but vowels
only, no consonants; this continued for several
months. By degrees the consonants were
added to the vowels, and the exclamations
became more and more articulate. It all ended
in a sort of very distinct twittering which
would last a quarter of an hour at a time, and
be repeated ten times a day.
" She took delight in this twitter ' like a bird '
but the sounds, whether vowels or consonants,
were at first very vague, and difficult to catch.
Her first clearly articulated sound was ;«« made
spontaneously by blowing through the lips.
The discovery amused her greatly, and the
sound was accordingly repeated over and over
again. The next sound she formed was
kraaau, a deep guttural made in the throat,
like the gutturals so characteristic of Eskimo ;
then came papapapa. These sounds, which
were at the outset her own inventions, were
fixed in her memory by being repeated by
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 197
others, and then imitated many times by her-
self. As yet, however, she attached no mean-
ing to any of the words she uttered, though,
like the dog or the horse, she already under-
stood two or three of the words she heard
from the lips of those about her. Thus from
the eleventh month onward she turned to her
mother at the words ' where is mamma ? '
which, be it observed, is a polysyllabic sen-
tence. But a month later the great step was
made which divides articulate-speaking man
from the brutes. The word b^b^ had now
come to signify for her a picture, or rather,
' something variegated in a shining frame.'
During the next six weeks her progress was
rapid, and she made use of nine words, each
with a distinct, though wide and general mean-
ing. These were papa, mama, tdtd, ' nurse,'
oua-oua, ' dog,' koko, ' chicken,' d^'d/, ' horse
or carriage,' mia, ' puss,' iaka and ' tem.
Besides these, b/b/ also continued to be em-
ployed, though its meaning was enlarged to
signify whatever wets. It will be noticed
that most of these words are reduplications,
that only one of them is monosyllabic, and
198 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
that three at least are imitations of natural
sounds. They were used, too, as general terms,
not in the sense of a single individual only, but
of all other individuals which seemed to the
child to resemble one another. M. Taine
observed that the guttural cry of the chicken,
koko, was imitated with greater exactness than
was possible for grown-up persons. The word
tein was probably a natural vocal gesture,
though it might have been a rude representation
oitiens. In any case it was used in the general
sense of ' give,' ' take,' ' look '; in fact, it signified
a desire to attract attention. It had been first
used for a fortnight as a mere vocal toy, with-
out any meaning being attached to it, and
after a time was left off, no other word taking
its place. Meanwhile, by the seventeenth
month, several new words had been learned,
including hamm, which the child employed to
signify 'eat' or ' I want to eat.' This word
was her own invention, the merely natural vocal
gesture of a person snapping at something.
But the guttural and labial force with which it
was pronounced gradually disappeared and the
word was finally reduced to the nasalized am."
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 199
It would hardly be possible to state in a
clearer and more complete way all the phenom-
ena which accompany the beginning of speech.
We have in ourselves by nature (and this con-
stitutes the real and exclusive attribute of man)
the faculty of speech, as we have the faculty of
walking. And we exercise the faculty of speech
for just the same reasons as we exercise the
faculty of walking: that is, from a natural im-
pulse, and because of want. We walk because
we feel this natural, uncontrollable impulse to
exercise our power of motion, and because we
want to get our food and every thing necessary
for us. We speak because we have a natural
uncontrollable power and tendency to speak,
and because we want to communicate with our
fellow-beings.
So the child, even before understanding the
sounds she utters, at the same time that she
moves about her four limbs, " utters a number
of cries and exclamations," but at first the
easiest sounds, only vowels ; and we know of
savages in whose languages consonants have
almost no value ; with them language rests
almost entirely on vowels. Then the child uses
200 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
some gutturals, then tries to imitate the act
of eating by uttering ;«;«. Then other sounds
come, some imitative, Hke koko, oua-oua, and
then other words. Their meaning is at first
fluctuating and uncertain, but by and by it
becomes more clear and specific ; the child be-
gins to distinguish.
Another very important fact is to be
noticed : the words which the child begins to
utter are properly neither roots, nor nouns, nor
verbs. They are all this at one time ; in fact,
they are all one sentence in one sound. So amm
or mm to the child means " food," as well as
" to eat," and also, " I want to eat," " I will
eat." The same fact occurs with the rudi-
mentary languages of inferior tribes : the unit
of speech is not a word, a noun or a verb, but
a sentence. This seems to solve reasonably a
problem, which for a long time has been agitated
by linguists, whether language began by nouns
or by verbs, that is, whether the primitive mean-
ing of roots was a single object or an abstraction.
The example of children and uncivilized peo-
ples — children in the history of mankind —
seems to authorize us to say that language
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 201
began with neither of them : the initial unit of
speech was a sentence — an imperfect, rudiment-
ary sentence. Out of this sentence grew the
distinction between the subject and the predi-
cate by that process of differentiation which
presides over the development of the whole
universe. This is not the place to follow this
argument further, but any one will see for him-
self how greatly it must tell on our ways of
conceiving grammar and on our doctrines of
logic.
It was once an argument of controversy,
whether language was due to onomatopeic pro-
cess, that is, to attempts to imitate with articu-
late sounds the sounds of things external; or
to the interjectional process — that is, to uncon-
scious exclamations, which man uttered at the
sight of external objects. According to the
first theory, language was in a certain way
brought home to us by the sounds of the uni-
verse around ; by the second theory, language
sprang up from our own innermost being, out of
a pressure, so to speak, of our own ideas and sensa-
tions. But all this antithetic architecture of
systems is more ingenious than true. We have
202 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
no reason to separate these two elements ; both
of them concurred in the formation of speech.
Moreover, we must remember that our vocal
organs do not work alone in the formation of
language. Spoken language is not all the lan-
guage. We speak with our hands, with our
eyes, with our whole body. Philology, of course,
studies only sound-\a.ngua.ge ; but in investi-
gating the origin of language, we must take in
consideration all the forces, all the elements
which can assist man in conveying his ideas, in
laying his mind open to his fellow-beings, which
is the scope of language. And when we con-
sider how many forces are brought into play in
the formation of language, we see how futile
it is to confine its origin to the use of only one
organ, and in only one direction.
As language is due to our need of communi-
cating with our fellow-beings, and as our own
words must be understood by them, as well as
theirs by us, it follows that language is not the
work of individuals, but of society. Language
is a social phenomenon. No language is possi-
ble except where society exists, however low
and rudimentary. And just in proportion as a
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 203
society is complex, high and cultivated, its lan-
guage is rich and highly developed.
Another question remains to be considered.
Language developed slowly, through ages
and ages, from rude and formless elements,
such as we observe in children and sav-
ages. But were there many centres from
which language was developed, or have all
the languages of the world been developed
from one centre alone, from one and the
same source ? As far as we can tell, all analo-
gies point to numerous centres, in each one of
which, according to the race, the climate and
other peculiarities, a different language was
brought forth. The further we go back in the
history of language, and the lower we descend
in the scale of civilization, the greater is the
variety of languages we meet with. The child
of M. Taine developed some rudiments of lan-
guage, while another child, in conditions
slightly changed, would develop quite another
rudimentary speech. Among savages each
little tribe, separated as they are one from
another, has its own language. Moreover, as
there is no strong institution like an organized
204 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
government, a system of religion or literature,
to fix and steady the language, their language is
like a stream of water without banks : its course
is forever changing. Missionaries testify to
tribes whose languages were subject to such a
rapid transformation as to make a dictionary,
which had been composed fifty years before,
entirely worthless. It is civilization, with the
help of such forces as government, religion,
literature, common education, commerce, and
of great inventions like the press, which fixes a
language, and by binding many provinces into
one great state causes many and different dia-
lects to be superseded by one national lan-
guage. Without the press, commerce and
public schools, the language of the United
States would now differ more widely from the
language of England than Dutch from Ger-
man, or Italian from French.
Another question closely connected with the
origin of language is the relation between lan-
guage and thought. It is a common saying
that without language no thought is possible.
There is some exaggeration in this aphorism.
Thought properly exists before language. It
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 205
is because we have an idea that we make a
word or give an old word a new meaning.
We invent a new machine, we have the idea of
it, and still we do not know yet how to name
it. After some consideration we agree upon a
name ; but the idea was first. Were a savage
to see a locomotive, he would not know what it
was ; very probably he would conceive of it an
idea absolutely inadequate, and, according to
this idea, he would name it. He would per-
haps call it "flying fire," or something of the
kind. Thus when we reach some new idea
either in mathematics, or metaphysics, or any
other science, we try to find out a name for it.
In any case thought precedes language ; lan-
guage is not to be confused with thought ; it
is but an instrument of thought. But withal
we must not underrate the importance of lan-
guage in this respect. If language is not
thought, it is, however, such a powerful aux-
iliary that thought without it would be little
better than a helpless cripple. Had we no
means of expressing our ideas, no consecutive
reasoning would be possible : because we can
have an idea without expressing it ; but we
2o6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
can not form a simple ratiocination without
putting it into words, whether uttered or un-
spoken. We have eyes and powers of vision,
but we can not look at our face without the aid
of a mirror ; in the same way, we can not look
into ourselves, we can not be conscious of our
mental power, without the help of language.
Finally, before leaving this argument on the
origin of language, one question remains to be
answered. We said that we have a natural
faculty of speech. It is obvious to ask: where
is such faculty ? This question transcends the
limits of philology; it is for the biologist to
answer it. The French anthropologist, M.
Broca (quoted by Sayce), localizes the faculty
of speech in a very circumscribed portion of
the two cerebral hemispheres, and more espec-
ially of the left. These two hemispheres are
distinguished in their under side into three
lobes : the posterior, the middle and the ante-
rior. The two latter are separated from one
another by what is called the Sylvian fissure.
It is on the upper edge of this fissure that M.
Broca places the seat of the faculty of speech.
" Aphasia (want of speech), he finds, is invari-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 207
ably accompanied by lesion or disease of this
portion of the brain. The lesion occurs in the
left hemisphere in about nineteen out of twenty
cases, and though the faculty of speech is
sometimes not affected even by a serious lesion
of the right hemisphere, it has never been
known to survive in the case of those whose
autopsy has disclosed a deep lesion of the two
convolutions of the right and left hemispheres."
VII.
COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY.
IT may now be hoped that the reader is per-
suaded that the science of language,
although it professes to deal merely with words,
is not so unimportant a science as it might
seem at first.
After the human mind, language is the most
powerful organ of civilization, and a scientific
study of language can not but touch upon ques-
tions of the most vital importance to mankind.
As we have just seen, if language is not thought,
it is at least its most powerful instrument, its
most immediate index ; and the study of the
development of language is most closely con-
nected with the development of the human
mind. Besides, language has a historical
importance which no other human fact can
claim for itself. Strange as it may seem, this
invisible breath, which we utter in organic
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 209
sounds, is far stronger than aught that we can
raise of stone or bronze. The Egyptian pyra-
mids will have long been ruined, crumbled into
dust, and dispersed by the winds of the desert,
when the scholars of generations to come will
still be studying and analyzing, with even
better results perhaps than our own, the words
uttered by the forefathers of the men who
raised those monumental structures.
In the history of our race we go back a cer-
tain distance by the help of books, and other
monuments, but at last we reach a point where
there are no books, no monuments, no pyra-
mids, no temples ; where not a stone is left to
mark our way further into the mist of the past.
But then, when every other help fails, language
remains to us ; we can rebuild the languages of
peoples, who, centuries ago, were swept from
the face of the earth, and by the fragmentary
debris of their language we can still catch a
glimpse of their modes of life, of some of the
most notable events of their history, of their
origin, and of their fate.
This wonderful work of reconstruction has
been carried on, to a certain extent, for the
2IO THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
Indo-European family. Although the mother
tongue, from which these languages are derived,
is dead, we see by the evidence of these same
languages that it was spoken by people who
lived more than 3,000 years ago. The original
abode of this primitive people must have been
in the north-eastern part of the Iranian table-
land, near the Hindu-kush mountains. It
seems there were several distinct tribes, and
the language had several local varieties, or dia-
lects. These varieties grew more and more
important, especially after the tribes had left
their ancient abode and scattered themselves
over Europe and Asia, until they assumed the
aspect of languages which at first seem to have
no connection.
Again, by the evidence of the Aryan lan-
guages, we see that the people who spoke the
Aryan mother tongue, was not nomadic, but
" had settled habitations, even towns and fortified
places, and addicted itself in part to the rear-
ing of cattle, in part to the cultivation of the
earth. It possessed our chief domestic animals
— the horse, the ox, the sheep, the goat, and
the swine, beside the dog ; the bear and the
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. zil
wolf were foes that ravaged its flocks ; the
mouse and fly were already its domestic pests.
" The region it inhabited was a varied one,
not bordering upon the ocean. The season
whose name has been most persistent is the
winter. Barley, and perhaps also wheat, was
raised for food, and converted into meal. Mead
was prepared from honey, as a cheering and
inebriating drink. The use of certain metals
was known ; whether iron was one of these
admits of question. The art of weaving was
practiced ; wood and hemp, and possibly flax,
being the materials employed. Of other
branches of domestic industry little that is
definite can be said ; but those already men-
tioned imply a variety of others, as co-ordinate
or auxiliary to them. The weapons of offense
and defense were those which are usual among
primitive peoples — the sword, spear, bow and
shield. Boats were manufactured, and moved
by oars. Of extended and elaborate political
organization no traces are discoverable — the
people was doubtless a congeries of petty
tribes, under chiefs and leaders rather than
kings, and with institutions of a patriarchal
212 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
cast, among which the reduction to servitude of
prisoners taken in war appears not to have been
wanting.
" The structure and relations of the family-
are more clearly seen ; names of the members,
even to the second and third degrees of con-
sanguinity and affinity, were already fixed ; and
were significant of affectionate regard and
trustful interdependence. That woman was
looked down upon as a being in capacity and
dignity inferior to man we find no indication
whatever.
" The art of numeration was learned, at least
up to a hundred ; there is no general Indo-
European word for "thousand." Some of the
stars were noticed and named. The moon
was the chief measurer of time.
" The religion was polytheistic, a worship of
the personified powers of nature. Its rites,
whatever they were, were practiced without the
aid of a priesthood." — Whitney.
Thus it is that by the help of words we can
penetrate into the history of the most civilized
peoples, as the Greeks and the Romans, into
their languages, into many phases of their life,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 213
far deeper than they themselves were able to
do. As for their origin, we know positively
where they came from, just as we know who
our own ancestors were, while on this subject
they had to be satisfied with vague and fantas-
tic imaginings, without any means whatever of
ascertaining the truth. Their mythology was
to their philosophers and poets — and always
has been since to every scholar — a great riddle,
which they tried in vain to solve. Now, thanks
above all to- the science of language, the re-
searches, not only in Greek and Roman, but in
all the Indo-European mythology, have entered
upon a new and sure path, where every step is
at once a conquest and a help toward ulterior
victories.
The ancient and modern theories about the
origin of the mythology of Hellas and Rome
may be reduced to three. Some sneered at
those fanciful creations and thought they had
been invented by shrewd men in order to teach
the multitude to behave themselves ; which is
rather hard for us to understand, when we con-
sider that all kinds of wrongful acts, passions,
and vices were attributed to most of those
214 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
gods. Another school pretended to see in
mythological fables merely a veil which covered
events that had really taken place, and years
of toil were spent, and enormous volumes pub-
lished, in order to show what hero, or king,
was hidden under the names of Jupiter ; who
was ^acus ; where did Saturn live and reign.
The third school held also that mythology
veiled historical events, but they had a partic-
ular tendency to look at Greek mythology as a
mere disguise of the facts of the Old Testa-
ment. Thus they recognized Noah and Noah's
three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, in Saturn
and his three sons, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto.
Vulcan was identified with Tubal Cain, Typhon
with Og. One writer pretended that the
Odyssey was an exposition of the history of
the patriarchs, the emigration of Lot from
Sodom, and the death of Moses, while the
Iliad told of the conquest and destruction of
Jericho ! Of course, there is not the least fact
to buttress up such extravagant opinions, and
all this ingenuity was simply wasted. The
science of language has the great merit of
having established this fact, that, given a fam-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 215
ily of peoples descended from a common stock,
as we can not explain their words without com-
paring them one with the other and without
going back to the common source from which
those different words sprung ; so when we study
the growth of mythology with kindred peoples,
it is a sheer waste of time to try to explain
those various myths without resorting to com-
parison, without contrasting the various forms
which each myth assumes with each one of
those peoples, so as to find by means of these
comparisons which is the simplest of all those
forms, where the myth comes from, and how
it was successively developed.
With reference to Greece and Rome, it has
always been known that Latin and Greek were
two cognate languages ; but what their mutual
relations really were, and what their origin, it
was not possible to ascertain, so long as we
remained in Greece and Rome. We had to go
out of that field ; we had to take in another
term of comparison — Sanskrit — and then the
structure of Latin and Greek, their origin and
mutual relations, could be found and defined
in all certainty.
2i6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
It is the same with mythology. Greek and
Roman mythology never could be explained
without resorting to comparisons with the
mythology of cognate peoples. Luckily, what
Sanskrit has proved to be for Latin and Greek,
Indian mythology is for the Greek and Roman
Olympus. Thanks to the Vedas, the most an-
cient product of Indian literature, we can sur-
prise, so to speak, mythology in its growth,
and thence follow it to Greece and Rome, and
to the other branches of the Indo-European
family.
Unfortunately, those studies are rife with
difficulties, and,- having been undertaken only
of late years, the harvest of positive results
which they have yielded is not yet very large.
But it is continually increasing, and it is to be
hoped that it will be great and conspicuous ere
long.
Meanwhile, some highly noteworthy facts
have been acquired and, what is most impor-
tant, we now know how the myth is formed.
Although, it is difficult to follow it in its growth,
and although scholars are sometimes apt to
disagree about many facts incident to its life,
7'HE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 217
still we are able to tell how it is born. This is
a great achievement. When the source of a
river is discovered, it is reasonable to hope that
we will succeed before long in finding its
course, its branches, and every thing about it.
The growth of the myth is like a particular
kind of metaphor. The original meaning of a
word is lost, one of its metaphorical meanings is
exaggerated far beyond its original signification,
and around this latter meaning a legend grows
up, which constitutes a myth. For instance, as
Max Mullersowell explains, nothing is so nat-
ural, especially to a primitive people, as to speak
of the sun's rays, which seem to play with the
foliage of the trees and caress the mountain
tops, as the arms or hands of the sun. We
must not wonder then at reading in the Vedas,
that the sun was called, among other epithets,
" the golden-handed." Nothing is more natural
and more easy to explain. But by and by, this
simple and natural reason for the epithet,
" golden-handed," was forgotten : the sun was
spoken of as a person, as a God, who carries
gold in his hand and showers it upon his pious
worshipers. Nor does the popular imagination
2i8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
stop here : we find in the commentaries to the
Vedas, a story that the sun had lost one of his
hands, and the priests had replaced it with a
golden one. Later the sun, under the name of
Savitar, becomes himself a priest, and we read
how once in performing a sacrifice he cut off his
hand, and the other priests made a golden one
for him.
Take another case ; Marut m Sanskrit means
" wind," and there is nothing extraordinary in
saying that the wind sings. Such expressions are
familiar in all languages. But in the Vedas we
find that the Maruts are transformed into singers.
They are " musicians."
The most important God of the Greek and
Roman Olympus had no dissimilar origin. The
Greek Zeus, the Latin Jovis (or lu, Ju-piter),
Dyaus in Sanskrit, Tiw in Anglo-Saxon (pre-
served in Tiwsdoeg, Tuesday) are all traced back
by comparative philology to the root diu which
means " to beam," " to shine," and it was used
especially to denote sky and day. At the start,
then, Zeus and Jove meant nothing but the sky;
but this primitive meaning of the word by and
by was lost, and Zeus and Jupiter became the
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 219
giver of the rain, the source of light, the maker
of the seasons, the ruler of the world.
The great personality of Prometheus, the
deep meaning attributed to it by Greek poets,
the works of art that illustrate it all over
the world, are known to every body ; yet this
great myth, if we trace it back to India, has a
very humble origin. Pramantha, the Indian
name of Prometheus, was but a stick, which, by
rubbing against another stick, was made to give
heat and fire — the only way this, of getting
fire with a primitive community. The root -
manth, from which Pra-mantha comes, means to
agitate, to shake quickly ; a meaning which fits
perfectly the first condition of Pramantha. But
the root manth means also to draw out, to steal.
Hence Pramantha came to be thought of as a
" stealer of fire;" hence, the whole legend^-
which did not reach its utmost complexity until
it was elaborated by Greek fancy — of the giant
stealing the fire from Heaven, the consequent
wrath of Zeus, and the martyrdom of Pro-
metheus. Prometheus was all the dearer to the
people inasmuch as the origin of fire was
naturally connected with the origin and progress
220 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
of every useful art, and Prometheus was there-
fore looked upon as the greatest benefactor of
mankind.
I do not pursue these mythological dis-
quisitions any further, as most myths
can not be explained satisfactorily without
bringing in many linguistic facts which would
transcend by far the limits of this work. But
these brief hints are enough, I hope, to show in
what light now the growth of mythology
is regarded, and how this branch of human
research has been entirely renovated by the
science of language. Of course, we must not
forget another powerful factor of mythology :
that tendency, common especially to unculti-
vated minds, to see personal forces at work in all
the phenomena of the universe. But this same
tendency would go a very short way, were it not
helped in its course by the metaphorical use of
words, which alone can give shape to the
personifying tendencies of our minds.
So that, after all, the history of mythology is
in great part a history of words. Words,
metaphorically used, and whose original mean-
ing is lost, give rise to legends in keeping with
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 221
their new meaning and with the tendency of
primitive, uncultivated minds to see in natural
phenomena those same forces, whose working
they feel within themselves. This mythological
process is not different after all from what has
taken place in historical times, nor from what is
going on daily around us. The history of the
middle ages is full of astonishing legends,
built entirely upon words, and more sur-
prising even than the stories of ancient
mythology. The name of the city of Rheims
in France, for instance, gave rise to a legend
widely spread over Europe, that that city had
been founded by Remus, the brother of Rom-
ulus, and we read in many medieval chronicles
that afterwards Remus went to Rome, and the
enmity between the two brothers grew out of
the jealousy of Romulus because of the great
prosperity of the city founded by his brother.
The names of almost all the German princes
and barons were traced back by medieval
writers to Roman families, and s\.ox\&%ad hoc oi
their descent, of fabulous migrations and deeds,
were easily invented and currently believed.
The " Legenda Aurea " says of St. Christo-
2 22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
pher: " He would not serve any body who had
himself a master, and when he heard that his lord
was afraid of the devil, he left him and became
himself the servant of the devil. One day,
however, when passing a cross, he observed
that his new master was afraid of the cross, and
learning that there was One still more power-
ful than the devil, he left him to enter the ser-
vice of Christ. He was instructed by an old
hermit, but being unable to fast or to pray, he
was told to serve Christ by carrying travelers
across a deep river. This he did until one day he
was called three times, and the third time he saw
a child that wished to be carried across the river.
He took him on his shoulders, but his weight
was so great that he could hardly reach the
opposite shore. When he had reached it, the
child told him he had carried Christ himself on
his shoulders, in proof whereof his stick, which
he had used for many years, when planted in
the earth grew into a tree."
There is not a shadow of truth in this legend ;
even sacred writers agree that it sprung up
entirely from the name of the saint, " Christo-
pher," which means " he who carries God,"
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 223
(from the root fer, to carry,) namely in his
heart. But the name was taken in a material
sense and the legend was invented to explain it.
Sayce relates how a " houskeeper used to
point out a Canaletto to visitors with the
remark that it was ' a candle-light picture, so-
called because it could not be seen to best
advantage during the day,' and what this good
housekeeper did on a small scale, mankind has
always been doing on a large scale."
A snow lake on the top of- the Swiss moun-
tain Pilatus is said to have been the place
where the unworthy Roman proconsul found
his death ; and horrible descriptions were
spread abroad of that pretty lake. The name
of the mountain has nothing to do with Pilate ;
it was called Pilatus from 'Latin pileum, " cap,"
whether they meant the cap of clouds or the
cap of snow which crowns it.
Closely connected with comparative mythol-
ogy is the science of religions. Religions may
be divided into two classes : those that have
been organized into a system, and those
that have not. The religions of the latter class
are in reality a mere ensemble of mythological
224 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
tales, and in order to explain them we must
resort to the science of language, as we have
seen. Religions of the former class rest on
sacred books which also can not be satisfactor-
ily explained without the help of comparative
philology. So that in either case, the science
of religions rests on the science of language.
Of course, the intuition of the divine, the
sense of the infinite, which constitutes the soul
of all religion, lies outside the pale of science.
But the various forms in which different peo-
ples have conceived divinity, the various ways
in which they have represented it, may be the
object of scientific investigations. The science
of religions will be one of the greatest offsprings
of the science of language, since nothing is so
interesting as to follow step by step, compara-
tively and historically, the toilsome path by
which poor struggling humanity has risen to an
ever higher conception of the Divine.
Leaving Christianity aside — from the ser-
pents and stones and beasts worshiped by the
savage, to the beautiful genial inhabitants of the
Greek Olympus, what a long way ! what a long
course of centuries is required to bridge over
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 225
such an abyss ! Would it not be highly interest-
ing, would it not throw a great light upon
human nature, if it were possible to follow, step
by step, the way trodden by mankind from one
of these extremities to the other ? Undoubtedly
it would ; and it will be possible too, but solely
through the science of language. The work is
as vast as it is important ; a long time will be
requisite before all possible results can be ob-
tained ; but it is fairly begun, and scholars of
all nations toil on at it laboriously and hope-
fully.
Another science which owes its origin to the
science of language is known by the name of
folk-lore. It studies particularly all those
legends and stories which are current among
the people, and those tales which are the
special heirloom of nurseries and in which chil-
dren revel.
Once these legends and tales were looked
down upon as mere nonsense, fit only to amuse
children and decrepit old people. But since they
have been studied in the light of comparative
philology, treasures of ethnological, historical
and linguistical information have appeared hid-
2 26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
den in them, which at first it would have
been temerity even to suspect. The tales
with which mothers and nurses amuse chil-
dren, and which fill them with terror, or
light up with merriment familiar gatherings
around the fireside, all the world over, are
not the inventions of the mother, the nurse,
or the story teller; they belong to a large
patrimony, common to all branches of one race,
sometimes even to different races. They have
traveled from afar; many of them have come
down to us from our forefathers in the central
plains of Asia ; they have accompanied them
in their migrations all over Europe and Asia ;
they have changed with the language, the
religion, and the surroundings ; but in sub-
stance they have remained the same. To-day
we can take a story told to English children
by their nurses, compare it with the same story,
slightly changed, as it is told to French, Ger-
man, Italian, Russian, and Indian children, and
go back to the source from which the story
came, or at least, to a very ancient version in
which it was first told.
These comparative studies in folk-lore are not
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 227
without great importance : they throw no little
light upon the relations of the different branches
of mankind, and their history, and upon the
psychic development of nations ; and they teach
us, more forcibly perhaps than any other science,
the fundamental unity of human nature. It
has been said with reason that " an exhaustive
account of the folk-lores of the world would be
equivalent to a complete history of the thoughts
of mankind."
VIII.
LANGUAGES AND RACES — LOCAL AND FAMILY
NAMES.
"Names are enduring — generations come and go ... .
Nomenclature is a well in which as the fresh water is flowing
perennially through, there is left a sediment that clings to the
bottom." — C. W. Bardsley.
AMONG the most important questions which
present themselves to the mind of the
student of language, is that of the connection
between peoples and languages. In the begin-
ning of the science of language some students,
not entirely free from that over-enthusiasm
which is a great strength as well as a fruitful
cause of mistakes with all pioneers, went so far
as to identify the idea of race and language,
and to hold that peoples who speak the same
language belong to the same race, or the same
family. A great part of the political move-
ments which in this century have changed the
face of Europe, have been prompted by the
idea of nationality. Europe aspired, and still
aspires to be organized according to nationali-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 229
ties, which is considered a natural organization
as contrasted with the artificial divisions dic-
tated by diplomacy. But on what ground was
placed the differentiation of nationalities?
Mainly on laiiguage. Germans were said to be
the peoples who speak German ; French those
who speak French ; Italians those who speak
Italian. But whoever has followed our pre-
vious reasonings can easily judge for himself
of the real value of such claims. Language is
entirely distinct from race. As an Indian child
brought up in England learns English as his
own natural language, so a community belong-
ing to one .family of peoples may, and many
times do, learn and speak and use exclusively a
language belonging to quite a different family.
France, which is mainly of Celtic and Germanic
blood, speaks a Latin language ; while in the
veins of the peoples who speak Italian flows a
great amount of non-Latin blood. Celtic Ire-
land speaks English, a Teutonic language.
History is full of such instances, and to assume
that peoples belong to the same family merely
because they speak cognate languages is against
all historical evidence.
230 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
We must not, however, underrate the value of
language for ethnological researches. If rela-
tionship of language does not prove absolutely
relationship of blood, it has still great weight.
If other characteristics concur, and positive his-
torical facts are not against it, then relationship
of language may be supposed to afford a con-
clusive proof. Besides, we must remember
that when a community came to change their
own language for another, there generally is
historical evidence of such fact ; so that, when
such historical evidence is wanting, relationship
of language is by itself, if not a proof, at least
a strong presumption of relationship of blood.
If we go back to the mists of earliest his-
tory, nothing helps us so much as the science
of language to discover and follow the
tracks of the great migrations of races which
first peopled Europe and superseded each
other, or mingled together, long before they
were civilized enough to preserve and hand
down to postenity the records of important
events. The monuments of those ages which
can be utilized by the ethnologist are extremely
scanty ; records, properly historical, are missing
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 231
entirely ; nothing remains but fragments of
speech. By the aid of these, the science of
language can take us back to ages where both
history and ethnology are equally silent, and
can show us by what races the ground of Europe
has been successively trodden ; how they forced
one another away from their places, or how
they settled and mingled together. Thus it is
that by the help of these linguistic materials
we can discern the nationality of the migratory
tribes which move in the early history of Eu-
rope, better even than the Romans who came
in contact with' them, and a few fragmentary
words enable us to correct the mistakes of
Julius Caesar.
Treasures of historical and ethnological infor-
mation lie hidden in local names, which have
persisted through centuries down to our days,
and that branch of the science of language
which is devoted to the study of local names is
one of the most interesting of all. We daily
pronounce the name of some river, or mountain,
or city, without ever pausing to ask why they
should be called by such names. Who has
ever asked himself what London means ? or
232 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
Paris, or Berlin? Where do the names of our
rivers come from? Who named them? Such
names cannot be the work of nature ; they have
been bestowed by men. And if men are reason-
able beings, we must assume that there was a
reason why such city, or river, or mountain, or
country was called by such or such a name.
In other words, local names, however obscure
and meaningless they may appear to us, must
have had a meaning ; a meaning which was
clear to those by whom such names were first
bestowed. Even the uneducated feel, as by
instinct, that it must be so, since they display
anuncheckable tendency to -etymologize about
local names. But it was for the science of
language to study in a systematic way the
formation of local names, to bring forth their
true value, both linguistic and historical, and
in many cases to find out their primitive mean,
ing, although hidden by centuries of unwritten
history, and sometimes disguised by false ety-
mologies and fanciful legends. In this way
local names are made to throw not a little light
upon events long forgotten, or very dimly
remembered, migrations of peoples, and mem-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 233
ories of races afterward swept from the
country.
Underthetitle,"Words and Places," Isaac Tay-
lor, the learned author of the History of the Al-
phabet, has summed up, in a plain and at the
same time comprehensive way, the main results
of recent philological researches concerning local
names in Europe, and in England in particular.
In the first place, in order to understand
better what happened centuries ago, let us
glance at what has been going on in recent
times, where facts can be easily ascertained.
If we look at a map of America, we find
names derived from a dozen languages. First
we have scattered Indian names ; like the
Potomac, Niagara, Allegheny, etc. " These
names are very sparsely distributed over large
areas, some of them filled almost exclusively
with English names, while in others the names
are mostly of Spanish or Portuguese origin —
the boundary between the regions of the
English and Spanish, or of the Spanish and
Portuguese names, being easily traceable. In
Louisiana and Lower Canada we find a pre-
dominance of French names, many of them
234 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
exhibiting Norman and Breton peculiarities.
In New York we find, here and there, a few
Dutch names, as well as patches of German
names in Michigan and Brazil. We find that
the Indian, Dutch and French names have
more frequently been corrupted than those
derived either from the English or from the
Spanish languages If we were entirely
destitute of any historical records of the actual
course of American colonization, it is evident
that, with the aid of the map alone, we might
recover many most important facts, and put
together an outline, by no means to be despised,
of the early history of the continent ; we might
successfully investigate the retrocession and
extinction of the Indian tribes — we might dis-
cover the positions in which the colonies of the
several European nations were planted — we
might show, from the character of the names,
how the gradually increasing supremacy of the
Anglo-American stock must have enabled it to
incorporate, and overlay with a layer of English
names, the colonies of other nations, such as
the Spanish settlements in Florida and Texas,
the Dutch colony in the neighborhood of New
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 235
York, and the French settlements on the St.
Lawrence and the Mississippi.
"The same thing that happened with local
names in America, took place in Europe, where
we can, with their sole aid, follow the migra-
tions of the Celts, the Teutons, and all the
most important races.
" Wilhelm von Humboldt was one of the
pioneers in this new science of etymological
ethnology. On the map of Spain, France and
Italy, he has marked out, by the evidence of
names alone, the precise regions which, before
the period of the Roman conquest, were inhab-
ited by those Euskarian or Iberic races, who
are now represented by the Basques— the
mountaineers of the Asturiasand the Pyrenees.
" By a similar process Prichard demonstrated
that the ancient Belgse were of Celtic, not of
Teutonic, race, as had previously been sup-
posed. So cogent is the evidence supplied by
these names, that ethnologists are agreed in
setting aside the direct testimony of such a
good authority as Caesar, who asserts that the
Belgae were of German blood.
"Archdeacon Williams, in like manner, has
236 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
indicated the limits of the Celtic region in
Northern Italy, and has pointed out detached
Celtic colonies in the central portion of that
peninsula. Other industrious explorers have
followed the wanderings of this ancient people
through Switzerland, Germany and France, and
have shown that in those countries the Celtic
speech still lives upon the map, though it has
vanished from the glossary."
For England, "this method has afforded re-
sults of peculiar interest and value. It has
enabled us to detect the successive tides of
immigration that have flowed in ; as the ripple-
marked slabs of sandstone record the tidal flow
of the primeval ocean, so wave after wave of
population — Gaelic, Cymric, Roman, Saxon,
Anglian, Frisian, Norwegian, Danish, Nor-
man and Flemish — has left its mark upon the
once shifting, but now indurated sands of lan-
guage. The modern map of England enables
us to prove that almost the whole of England
was once Celtic, and shows us that the Scottish
lowlands were peopled by tribes belonging to
the Welsh, and not to the Gaelic stock. The
study of Anglo-Saxon names enables us to trace
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 237
the nature and progress of the Teutonic settle-
ment, and to draw the line betvveen the Anglian
and the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms ; while the
Scandinavian village-names of Lincolnshire,
Leicestershire, Caithness, Cumberland, Pem-
brokeshire, Iceland and Normandy, teach us
the almost forgotten story of the fierce
Vikings, who left the fiords of Norway and the
vies of Denmark to plunder and to conquer
the coasts and kingdoms of western Europe."
In these researches, names of rivers and
mountains are of the greatest value ; since
great rivers generally mark the course of emi-
gration, and " mountain fastnesses have always
formed a providential refuge for conquered
tribes."
We can follow, by the aid of the map, the
progress of the Phoenicians, and the triumphal
march of the Arabs. Spain is all dotted with
Arabic names, thick near the shores, but which
become less and less numerous the more we
progress toward the mountains, until they dis-
appear almost entirely in Galicia and the
Asturias, the extreme northern part of the
peninsula. There are many Spanish rivers
238 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
whose names begin by guad. In Palestine and
Arabia this word appears in the form of wadi
— a ravine, a river. The name of the Gaudal-
quivir is a corruption of Wadi-1-kebir, the great
river — a name which is found also in Arabia.
We have also the river names of Guadalcazar,
which is Wadi-1-kasr, "the river of the palace" ;
Guadalhorra, from Wadi-1-ghar, "the river of
the cave" ; Guadarranke, from Wadi-1-ramack,
" the mares' river" ; Guadalquiton, from Wadi-
1-kitt, " the cat river " ; Guadalaxara, from
Wadi-1 hajarah, "the river of the stones";
Guaroman, from Wadi-roman, " the river of
the pomegranate trees "; Guadalaviar, from
Wadi-1-abyadh, " the white river" ; Guadalupe,
" the river of the bay" ; Guadalbacar, "the ox
river"; Guadaliman, "the red river" ; Guada-
rama, " the sandy river," etc.
We find the word medina, " city," in Medina
Coeli, Medina Sidonia, and three other Spanish
cities. We find not a few names beginning by
ca/a (Arabic kal-ah, a castle), or by alcala,
which is the same word with the Arabic defi-
nite article prefixed.
Turning again to England, the results of
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 239
such researches are even more abundant.
England has been said to be " the land of inclo-
sures." In fact '■ an examination of English
local names shows us that the love of privacy,
and the seclusiveness of character, which is so
often laid to the charge of Englishmen, pre-
vailed in full force among the races which
imposed names upon English villages. The
universally recurring terminations- ton, ham,
worth, stoke, stow, fold, garth, park, hay,
burgh, bury, brough, borrow, all convey the
notion of inclosure or protection."
The primary meaning of the suffix ton (Bar-
ton, Burton, Shottington, Wingleton, Goding-
ton, Appleton), is to be sought in the Gothic
tains, the old Norse teinn, and the Frisian
tene, all of which mean a twig — a radical
signification which survives in the phrase " the
tine of a fork." The Anglo-Saxon v&x\> tynan
means " to hedge." Brushwood, used for
hedging, is called tinetum in Low Latin. Hence
a tun or ton was a place surrounded by a hedge,
or rudely fortified by a palisade.
In most cases the isolated ton became the nu-
cleus of a village ; the village grew into a town.
240 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
The Anglo-Saxon j/^r^ and the Norse equiva-
lent garth contain nearly the same idea as ton.
Both denote some place guarded or girded.
Again the Anglo-Saxon weortihg, which
appears in English names in the form of worth
(Bosworth, Tamworth, Kenilworth, Walworth,
Wandsworth, etc.), bears a meaning nearly the
same as that of ton or garth. It denotes a
place warded or protected, from the Anglo-
Saxon warian, to ward or defend.
The suffixes bury, borough, burgh, brough and
burrow are related to the Anglo-Saxon verb
beorgan, and to the German bergen, to shelter
or hide.
The suffix ham, which is very frequent
in English names, appears in two forms in
Anglo-Saxon documents. One of them, ham,
signifies an inclosure, that which hems in ; the
other, ham. (German heim, English home), ex-
presses " the sanctity of the family bond."
But " the most important element which
enters into Anglo-Saxon names is the suffix
ing. It occurs in the names of more than one-
tenth of the whole number of English villages
and hamlets, often as a simple suffix, as in the
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 241
case of Barking, Brading, Dorking, Hastings,
Kettering, Tring, or Woking; but more fre-
quently we find that it forms the medial sylla-
ble of the name, as in the case of Buckingham,
Kensington, Islington, Haddington, or Wel-
lington. This syllable ing was the usual Anglo-
Saxon patronymic.
"Thus we read in the Saxon Chronicle (A. D.
547):
Ida waes Eopping, Ida was Eoppa's son ;
Eoppa waes Esing, Eoppa was Esa's son ;
Esa waes Inguing, Esa was Ingwy's son ;
Ingui, Augenwiting, Ingwy, Augenwit's son.
" In fact, the sufifix ing in the names of persons
had very much the same significance as the pre-
fix Mac in Scotland, O' in Ireland, Aj> in Wales.
A whole clan or tribe claiming to be descended
from a real or mythic progenitor, or a body of
adventurers attaching themselves to the stand-
ard of some chief, were thus distinguished by a
common patronymic or c/an name. . . . The
Saxon immigration was, doubtless, an immigra-
tion of clans. The subsequent Scandinavian
colonization was, on the other hand, wholly or
242 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
mainly effected by soldiers of fortune." We
can see this by Saxon local names which
mostly refer us, by their ending ing, to a clan,
while local names of Scandinavian origin are
generally traceable to the name of a single in-
dividual.
It is very interesting to compare Anglo-Saxon
names in England with those on the opposite
French coast, where, between Calais, Boulogne,
and St. Omer, the name of almost every village
and hamlet is of the pure Anglo-Saxon type. It
appears, by the analysis of these local names,
that the Anglo-Saxon settlements in France
were filial settlements of the Anglo-Saxons
already established in England.
Not less instructive are the local names given
by the Northmen. One of the most important
suffixes in such names is byr or by. This word,
which has the form bear or here in Devonshire,
boer in Iceland, originally meant an abode, a
single farm ; afterward it came to denote a vil-
lage (a by-law is a local law enacted by the
township). " In the Danish district of En-
gland — between Watling Street and the river
Tees — the sufifix by frequently takes the place
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 243
of the Anglo-Saxon ham or ton. In this region
there are numerous names Hke Grimsby, Whit-
by, Derby, Rugby, Kirby, Netherby, Selby,
Ashby. In Lincolnshire alone there are one
hundred names ending in by. To the north of
Watling Street there are some six hundred in-
stances of its occurrence — to the south of it,
scarcely one. There are scores and scores of
names ending in by in Jutland and Sleswic,
and not half-a-dozen throughout the whole of
Germany, and even these are found chiefly in
the Danish district of Holstein."
Another suffix is thorpe, thorp, or trop (Al-
thorpe, Copmansthorpe, Wilstrop), which
means an aggregation of houses — a village ; and
is the Norse form of the German f/isr/", a village.
By the help of such suffixes we can follow
the Northmen in their excursions, discover their
settlements, and even distinguish between
places which they visited for trade, and those
which they visited for booty.
In the same way we can follow the course of
that Celtic race which played so great a part
in the colonization of Europe. They were
divided into two great branches, both of which
244 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
have been pushed westward by the succeeding
deluges of the Romanic, Teutonic, and Sla-
vonic peoples. " In the geographical nomen-
clature of Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland,
Germany, and England, we find a Celtic sub-
stratum underlying the superficial deposits of
Romanic and Teutonic names.
"One class of local names is of special value
in investigations relating to primeval history.
The river-names, more particularly the names
of great rivers, are everywhere the memorials of
the earliest races. These river-names survive
where all other names have changed — they
seem to possess almost an indestructible vital-
ity. Towns may be destroyed, the sites of
human habitation may be removed, but the
ancient river-names are handed down from race
to race ; even the names of the eternal hills are
less permanent than those of rivers. In Ger-
many, France, Italy, Spain, we find villages
which bear Teutonic or Romanic names, stand-
ing on the banks of streams which still retain
their ancient Celtic appellations. Throughout
the whole of England there is hardly a single
river-name which is not Celtic."
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 245
The Celtic river- names are of two classes :
some mean simply water or river; others mean
rough, gentle, smooth, white, black, yellow, or
denote some other quality of the river. Celtic
words meaning " water," " river," are avon
(afon, aon, on), dur (dwr), esk, to which
scores of names of rivers have to be referred.'
Avon,Axona(Aisne), Seguana (Seine), Garumna
(Garonne), Dour, Glasdur (gray water), Esky,
Esker, Tem-ese (Thames) " the broad water."
Not only ethnological facts we can discover
hidden in ancient local names; but sometimes
they tell us also important news about the
state of civilization with a certain people at a
given period of time.
In England, for instance, it is an important
fact that, while almost all names of villages are
either Saxon or Scandinavian, the name for a
road has been borrowed from the Romans.
Street, as we have -had occasion to mention, is
the Latin strata, " paved roads." This fact
testifies to the great constructive qualities of
the Romans. They had not time to settle in
' The Gaelic word for water is uisge.
ruption of uisge-boy, ' ' yellow water. "
246 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
England permanently ; still, all the island had
been covered with forts, united one with the
other, straight as an arrow, by their, for the
time, magnificent roads.
The Romans had built also some bridges,
but that streams were generally unbridged
"nothing shows more conclusively than the
fact that where the great lines of Roman road
are intersected by rivers, we so frequently find
important towns bearing the Saxon suffix ford.
At Oxford, Hereford, Hertford, Bedford, Strat-
ford on-Avon, Stafford, Wallingford, Guilford,
and Chelmsford, considerable streams had to
be forded. In the kingdom of Essex, within
twenty miles of London, we find the names
Old Ford, Stratford, Ilford, Romford, Wood-
ford, Stapleford, Passingford, Stanford, Ching-
ford and Stortford."
"The Wall of Hadrian, or of Severus, as it
is called, ran from New Castle to Carlisle, and
is still in wonderful preservation. But even if
the massive masonry and huge earthen rampart
of this wall had perished, it would be easy to
trace its direction by means of the continuous
series of memorial names which are furnished
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 247
by the villages and farm-houses along its course.
It began at WaUsend, now famous as the place
where the best New Castle coals are shipped.
We then come in succession to places called
Benwe/l, Walhottle, Heddon-on-the-PF«//, We/-
ton, W^«//houses, Wall, Wa/wick Chesters,
Wallshiels, Wa/ltown, ThirlwaU, Birdoswald,
Wa/lhours, Walton, OXdwall, Wa/lknoll, Wall-
mill, and Wallhy, with Wa/lend, WaUioot, and
Wallhead at the western end.
Cester, caster, Celtic C^r, are modifications of
Latin castra, castle ; and generally recall the
name of some Latin fort : Rochester, Porches-
ter, Chesterton, Tadcaster, Brancaster, Ancas-
ter, Lancaster, Caerleon, Caerwis, Caerven, etc.,
etc."
Of historical events recorded, stereotyped,
so to speak, in local names, all Europe is full.
" Probably the greatest reverse ever suffered
by the Roman arms was the defeat which
Hannibal inflicted on Flaminius at Thrasy-
mene. The brook which flows through this
scene of slaughter is still called the ' Sangui-
netto ' (' blood ' in Italian is ' sangue '),
and the name of the neighboring valley of
248 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
' Ossaia ' (' ossa,' bones) shows that the plain
must have long been whitened by the bones of
the fallen Romans."
Now should any body ask whether any prac-
tical result may come out of this branch of the
science of language, we can surely answer:
yes ! one, at least, and very great. This ety-
mological ethnology helps the historian to pen-
etrate into the darkness of those ages, when the
nations, whose descendants now people Europe
and America, were not firmly settled anywhere,
but were, so to speak, in a state of wild sus-
pense, warring against one another, forcing, and
forced in their turn away from their abodes to
new regions and new climes. By these investi-
gations, which the science of language has made
possible and fruitful, we see, for instance, that
" Franks, Saxons, Angles, Sueves, Lombai'ds
and Burgundians, were united by a much
closer connection— ethnological, geographical
and political — than historians have hitherto
been willing to admit ; " — we see that the pre-
tended differences of race between the present
European nations are mostly the offspring of
national conceit, prejudices, and chauvinism.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 249
England, the country of the Anglo-Saxons,
teems with Celtic, Scandinavian, and Latin
blood ; whilst Anglo-Saxon, Normand, Celtic
and Teutonic blood flows in no small quantity
in the veins of the modern French. In Italy her-
self, at the very core of the Uatin race, we find
streams of Teutonic and Celtic blood, which in
some parts even exceeds by far the blood
inherited from Latin forefathers. The divis-
ions of nationalities, as they are now com-
monly understood, which foster the interna-
tional antagonism of Europe, and weigh down
the people with blind wars and ruinous stand-
ing armies, by these etymological researches
are once more shown to be false and artificial
not less than inhuman.
Thus, even from the remotest quarters,
science comes to the help of progressive
humanity, and, by the light of these investiga-
tions, which at first may seem useless and more
like learned trifling than earnest and worthy
research, those very names of nationalities —
like English, French, Germans — which thus far
have been pitted one against the other as
standards of hatred, are made to testify to the
2SO THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
common descent and brotherhood of those who
bear them. In truth, nothing helps more to
destroy prejudices than to inquire into their
origin. Prejudices are not checked either by
hatred or contempt ; amidst persecutions they
wax stronger : blood seems to foster them. But
they can not stand the light of history.
A kindred and very interesting subject of
study are the surnames. As tribes and peoples
grow, individual names are no longer sufificient.
Other names are to be resorted to, and they
are found sometimes in personal qualities, more
often in names which mark the family, or the clan,
or both, to which the individual belongs. The
number of such names, their nature and mean-
ing, vary from people to people, and their sys-
tematic study affords a good deal of interesting
information for the historian and the ethnolo-
gist, as well as for the linguist. Even people
most superficial in their culture have not failed
to notice that the way of naming a person in
the Old Testament is quite different from the
Roman way, and both differ from the Greek
surnames. Every people has worked out for
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 251
itself a system of surnames in harmony with
its own nature and institutions.
But we must confine our researches to En-
glish surnames, and here, too, we must be satis-
fied with the most elementary observations.
Those who would like to know more about this
matter may consult C. W. Bardsley's "Our
English Surnames," to which I am largely in-
debted for the remarks that follow.
The origin of most English surnames is to be
found either: 1st, in baptismal or patronymic
names ; 2d, in local names ; 3d, in trades and
occupations ; or 4th, in nick-names.
In the first place, it is useful to remember
that kin, cock, ot or ott, et or ett were suffixes
used to form diminutives. Kin is the Saxon
kin, and means " child, offspring" ; ot, et are of
Norman origin ; cock we have still in " cock-
robins," "cock-boats," cock-horses."
As instances of surnames of the first cate-
gory — from personal or patronymic names — we
may quote : from Simon, Simcox, Simpkins ;
from William, Wilkins, Wilcox, Willot, Wil-
lett ; from Mary, Marriott ; from Elias, Elliott ;
from Emma, Emmett, Emmott. Other names
252 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
have become surnames without any change:
John, Richard, Robert, Henry, Thomas, Ralph,
Geoffrey, Jordan, Stephen, Martin, Benedict,
Lawrence, Reginald, Gilbert, Roger, Walter,
Baldwin, Francis, Maurice.
Theobald was reduced to Tibbald, Tibbe and
Tebbe, and from it we have the following sur-
names: Theobald, Tibbald, Tibbie, Tipple,
Tibbes, Tebbes, Tipkins, Tippins, Tipson, Tib-
bats, Tibbets, Tibbits, Tebbatts, Tebbotts,
Tebbutts.
We must not wonder at this fecundity of
forms. In Italian there are more than three
hundred surnames derived from the name of
Domenico (Dominic).
From Gilbert we have Gibbs, Gibbins, Gib-
bons, Gibson, Gibbonson and Gipps.
From Elias we have Ellis, Elys, Elice,
Ellice, Elyas, Helyas, Eliot or Elliott, Ellsons,
Elkins, Elkinsons, Elcocks, Elliotsons.
Peter gives us the shorter forms : Parr, Peirs,
Pierce, Pears, Pearse, Peers. Hence Parsons,
Pearsons, Piersons, Peterson, and the pet forms
— Perretts, Parrots, Parretts, Peterkins, Per-
kins, Parkins, Parkinson, Perks and Perkes.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 253
From the feminine Petronilla we have Pero-
nell, Pernell or Parnell ; from Magdalen, Mau-
dlins, Maudsley. Tiffany \% only a popular form
for Theophania. -From Margaret — the Nor-
man-French Margot, Marjorie, Maggots, Mag-
gotson, Margots, Margets, Margetson, Mar-
gison, Margerison, Meggs, Maggs, Megson.
Matthew gives Matthews and Mathewsons,
Matinsons, Matsons and Matts.
From Bartholomew : Bartle, Bartlett, Batte,
Batty, Bates, Batsons, Batcocks, Badcocks,
Batkins and Bodkins.
To Thomas are to be referred : Thomasons,
Thomsons, Thompsons, Thomasetts, Thoms-
etts, Tompsetts, Thompkins, Tompkins, Tom-
kins, Tomkinsons, Thomlins, Tomlins, Tom-
linsons, Thomms, Thorns and Toms.
Not less numerous, perhaps, are the sur-
names derived from names of office and trade.
Sergeant is the origin of Sargeants, Sargants,
Sargeaunts, Sargents, Sergents, Sergeants, Sar-
jants, Sarjeants.
Beadell, Beadle, Beaddal, Biddle are to be
referred to beadle, the man who executed pro-
cesses or attended to proclamations.
254 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
Names of ofifice we have also in Priest,
Priestmann, Deken, Deakin, (Deacon), Chap-
lains, Chaplin, Abbot, Prior or Pryor, Canon or
Cannon, Moyne or Munn (Monk), Cook, But-
ler, for which we have the forms Botiller, Botil-
lers, Botelers, Botellers, Butillers, Butellier.
Spearman, Pikeman, Furbisher, Frobisher,
Furber, Sworders, Sheathers, and Spurriers,
remind us of warlike times and professions.
The surname Kisser is more warlike and blood-
thirsty than it seems at first sight. Kisser was
the manufacturer of " cuishes " or " thigh
armor " (French " cuisse," thigh).
In Forester or Forster or Foster, Parker, Park-
man, Woodward, we have a record of the exten-
sive woods of old, and of men devoted to their
care ; while Woodreefs, Woodrows, Woodroff,
and Woodruff are but corrupted forms of
"wood-reeve."
When the roofs of houses were composed
of thack, or thatch, every village had its
" thatcher." Hence the surnames of Thatcher,
Thacker, Thackery, and Thackeray.
As for the surname Smith, suffice it to say,
on Mr. Bardsley's authority, that in England,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 255
between and including the years 1838 and 1854,
were registered as born, or married, or dead,
not less than 286,307 Smiths.
Not a few surnames are due to personal nick-
names, as Strong, Long, Short, Bigg, Little,
Large, Small, Thick, Thin, Slight, Round,
Lean and Fatt, Megre and Stout, Ould and
Young, Light and Heavy. Many times,
beside the Anglo-Saxon, we have the Norman
nickname, as Large and Gros or Gross, Big or
Bigg or Bigge and Graunt or Grant or Grand,
Small and Pettit, Pettye, Petty or Peat ; Lowe
and Bas or Bass, Short and Curt, Fatte and
Gras or Grass, Strong and Fort, Ould and
Viele, Young, Younge and Jeune.
To the different complexions or t?ie color of
the hair we owe such surnames as White, Black,
Roux, Russell, Brown, Hore and Houre, Grey
and Grissel, Blanc, Blund, Blunt, Whitelock
or Whitlock, Silverlock, Blacklock. — Reeds,
Reids, Reads are all forms of the old rede, red.
Nicknames or personal qualities we have in
Goode, Patient, Best, Perfect, Wise, Sage,
Merry, Gay, Blythe, Joice, Friend, Goodhart,
Truman, True, Leal, Kind, Curtis or Curteis,
256 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
Fulhardy, Wilfulle, Hardy, Grave, Gentle,
Sweet, Meek, Goodfellow, and Longfellow.
Apropos of Longfellow, I transcribe here,
merely for a diversion, a rhythmical pleasantry,
recorded in the " Book of Days" (Chambers,
quoted by Mr. Bardsley). "Thomas Long-
fellow, landlord of the Golden Lion Inn, at
Brecon, must have pulled a rather long face
when he observed the following lines written
on the mantelshelf of his coffee-room :
' Tom Longfellow's name is most justly his due,
Long his neck, long his bill, which is very long too ;
Long the time ere your horse to the stable is led ;
Long before he's rubbed down, and much longer till fed;
Long indeed may you sit in a comfortless room,
Till from kitchen long dirty your dinner shall come ;
Long the oft told tale that your host will relate.
Long his face while complaining how long people eat ;
Long may Longfellow long ere he see me again —
Long 't will be ere I long for Tom Longfellow's Inn.'"
Not a few nicknames are taken from the ani-
mal kingdom, as Jay, Peacock, Rook, Pye,
Pyett, Lark, Finch, Goldfinch, Cuckoo, Cock,
Cockerell, Sparrow, Pidgeon, Dove, Swans,
Stork, Crane, Heron, Duck, Duckerell, Drake,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 257
Wildgoose, Greygoose, Gander, Woodcock,
Partrick, Pheasant or Feasant, Blackbird, etc.
But the most interesting for our studies are
the surnames derived from local names. The
name of the place where a man lived and whence
his family derived its name is indicated in
many ways. For instance, in connection with
the name — brook (old form broke) we find,
Alice de la Broke,
Andreas ate or atte (at the) Broke,
Peter ad le Broke,
Matilda ad Broke,
Reginald del Broke,
Richard apud (Latin '' near ") Broke,
Sarra de Broke,
Reginald bihunde Broke,
where we have admixtures of Latin, Norman
and English prefixes. These prefixes play a
rather important part in the formation of sur-
names.
From At-the-Well we have the surname
Wells, and also Attwell, or Atwell. From
Atte-Wood we have Wood, Atwood, and Att-
wood. From Atte-Lea — " at the pasture," we
have Lees, Leighs, Leghs, Atlays, Attlees.
2S8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
From Atte-Borough', Attenborough, and Atter-
bury. Atte-Ridge has given Attridge ; Atte-
Field, Attfield. From Atte-Town, Atte-Hill,
Atte-Tree, Atte-Cliffe, we have Atton, Athill,
Attree, Atcliffes. The prefix sometimes is
simply a: Thomas a Beclcet, is Thomas atte
Becket, that is to say, " at the streamlet."
Before a vowel, instead of atte, we find not
seldom atten. Atten-Oaks, for At-the-oaks,
has given Noakes and Nokes. Atten-ash has
given Nash ; Nelmes is for Atten-Elms ; Oven,
and Orchard in the olden registers are found
as Atte-novene, and Atte-norchard.
The same local qualifications give us Bridger,
and Bridgman, living near the bridge ; Brooker
and Brookman, Becker and Beckman, by the
brook, by the streamlet ; Weller or Wellman,
by the well ; while from particular trees we
have Beecher, (once written Le Beechar),
Asher, Oker, and so on.
The word den we find in many surnames, as
Wolfenden, Foxden, Ramsden, Harden (hare),
Buckden, Horsden, Oxenden,Cowden, Borden,
Sowden, Swinden, Eversden, Ogden, written
once " de Hogdene."
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 259
A fissure between hills is' recorded by such
names as Clives, Cliffes, Cleves, Clifford, Cleve-
land, Tunnicliffe, Sutcliffe, Nethercliffe, Top-
cliff, Ratcliffe, Redcliffe, etc. From combe, " a
cup-shaped depression," of the higher hillsides,
we have Broadcombe, Newcombe, Morcombe,
Lipscombe, Woolcombe, Whitecombe, Slo-
combe.
A provincialism for g'ate was ja(e, from
which we have "Yates," written once " atte-
Yate " ; Bygate or Byatt ; Woodgate or
Woodyat.
House we have in "del Hellus," written
once Hill-house. Woodus is the old "de la
Wode-house " ; Stannus is " Stane-house " or
" Stone-house " ; Malthus is " Malt-house." The
original form of the surname Bacchus is " del
Bake-house."
Croft, an inclosed field, has given Croft,
Meadowcroft, Ryecroft, Haycroft (that is
hedged-croft ; hay means a hedge, as we have
seen) ; Bancroft, from bean-croft.
The lee offered a shelter for all domestic
live-stock, and is represented, mainly under
the form ley, in many surnaimes : Horsley,
26o THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
Cowley, Kinley, Oxley or Oxlee, Buckley,
Hindley, Harley (hare) ; and from the names
of the trees which inclosed or covered the lee,
we have Ashley, Elmsley, Oakley, Liiidley,
Berkeley.
We should never come to an end had we to
go through all the English surnames derived
from local names. There is an old couplet :
In "ford," in "ham," in "ley," in "ton,"'
The most of English surnames run ;
and, as we have seen elsewhere, all these end-
ings, "ford," "ham," "ley," "ton," are but
words to denote places.
These brief and fragmentary mentions are
not guilty of any pretense of being a review of
English local and family names. But they are
sufficient, I hope, to show that in this field, too,
for every name there is a reason, which most
often we are able to find out ; and in so doing,
the science of language, while it accumulates
useful materials for itself, brings out no little
light for the historian and the ethnologist.
Sometimes particular customs, events, or
prejudices, local oddities or genealogical anec-
dotes, which otherwise would be lost forever,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS, 261
are unearthed by the linguist by means of a
local or family name. Viewed in this light, it
is true, then, as Mr. Bardsley says, that " the
country churchyard, with each mossy stone, is
a living page of history, and even the parish
register, instead of being a mere record of dry
and uninteresting facts, becomes instinct with
the lives and surroundings of our forefathers."
IX.
LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION.
THE study of language is so great a part of
our education that it is but natural to
expect that a science whose object is language,
must have some bearing on education. In fact,
education begins to feel the influence of the
great results attained by the science of lan-
guage. It merely begins, since the science of
language is very young, and its method and
achievements are not yet sufficiently known
even among those who are most concerned
with education.
But every day that passes, witnesses the
importance of this science increased and its
influence widened ; and it is safe to say that
the first half of the next century will see great
changes wrought in the programme and method
of public education. In the fir^t place the
great achievement, which we owe to the science
of language, is the discovery of laws governing
the life of speech. This apparently bewilder-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 263
ing.growth of words and this complicated cross-
ing and recrossing of sounds obey certain laws
as well as all that lives in the realm of nature.
This fact is easy to enunciate, but it requires
a good deal of reflection to grasp its whole
bearing. It upsets all the ideas about language
that still are almost commonly entertained
even by educated people, who have had no par-
ticular philological training. It lays open be-
fore us an entirely new world ; a world of sounds
intimately connected with thoughts; a world of
music, more powerful than all the music we
know, and obedient to particular laws, just as
music is ruled by harmonic laws; a world in
which all the powers of man, his mind, his bod-
ily organs, his reason, his perceptions, his sense
of art, his taste, meet and work together. To
know and prove that such a world is ruled by
laws, and that we can acquire a knowledge of
these laws, is indeed a great achievement, whose
importance will be felt every day more and
more in all departments of human culture.
That a knowledge of such laws is of practical util-
ity in acquiring languages, is not to be doubted.
He who undertakes to study French, Italian
264 l^HE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
and Spanish, and meets the words faire in
French, fare in Italian, and hacer in Spanisli ; or
lait in French, latte in Italian, leche in Spanish,
or again, fait in Yx&x\ch, fatto in ItaHan, hecho
in Spanish, what can he do but learn materially
and mechanically all these words by heart?
But if he has had any training in the science of
language, if he knows some of the rules accord-
ing to which the Latin word passes into the
Neo-Latin languages, he will see at once that
the words above quoted are, respectively, mere
varieties of the Latin ^oxAs facere, to do ; lacte
milk ; factum, done. He will thus have a
rational knowledge of the language he is study-
ing ; his reason comes to help his memory ; his
study becomes more interesting and more prof-
itable at once.
He who studies a language without caring to
know where it comes from, and what are the
laws that rule the formation of its words, pur-
sues a very material task which appeals a good
deal to his memory and very little to his intelli-
gence, and he is robbed of nine-tenths of the
interest which is to be found in the study of
languages.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 265
I well remember the first time I ever saw a
game of cricket. The rules of the game were
perfect Chinese to me. I saw a party of young
men, fine fellows most of them, throwing or
pitching a ball, and running to and fro as
quickly as they could. Of course I could not
help enjoying the sight, the clever throwing and
catching the balls, the elegant costumes and
attitudes of the young athletes ; still I was
puzzled rather than amused when I heard
the public applaud enthusiastically every
now and then, and I did not know why ; when
I saw the bowlers change their positions, or run
and yell ; or when I saw a player going
off the field and another coming in, without my
having a clue as to why they did so, and who
were the conquerors, or who the beaten.
At last a gentleman undertook kindly to ex-
plain to me the laws of the game. Then I saw
into it ; I understood the reason of every move-
ment ; I could appreciate better the skill of the
players, and my interest therein increased a
thousand fold.
It is very much the same thing with the
study of languages. He who studies them ma-
266 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
terially, as is now generally done, can not help
but wonder at the mysterious play of words and
sounds which is going on before him, and all he
can do is to try to catch as much of it as he can,
almost by sheer dint of memory. He who brings
to the study of languages a good philological
training, sees into the nature of the matter. He
notices the working of laws, and follows them
with interest and pleasure. Each law is like a
thread that guides him through the labyrinth
of language. Every word for him is not an
isolated fact, but a link of a great chain, or, if
you like, a little twig of a great tree, of which
he comprehends at a glance the full growth —
the roots, the trunk, the branches, the fruits.
He who knows only English a"nd undertakes
the study of French, will grind at it for months
and months, in many cases without satisfactory
results. He who has studied some Latin, and
has had some training in scientific grammar,
will master the French forms, especially the
formation of words and the grammatical inflec-
tions, in a very short time, and in such a way
as to have of them not merely a material, but
a rational and historical knowledge. As for
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 267
fluency of speech, of course, it can only be
attained by practice ; but every body knows
what a great help it is to this end to be well
grounded in the grammatical forms.
Besides this practical advantage, still greater
is the importance of the science of language
for the general training of the mind. It is a
universal complaint that the study of languages
develops almost exclusively memory, at the
expense of our other mental faculties. There-
fore there is a general cry for more scientific
education. This is perfectly right when we
consider the way in which the study of lan-
guages is now pursued ; millions of boys and
girls are mercilessly crammed with tenses,
moods and cases, which are dead letter to them.
The boy whose mind is forever prone to ask
why? why? at every thing he comes across, is
obliged to sit still for years and years, and
swallow paradigms and conjugations without
ever being allowed to ask the why of what he
studies, and whence those forms come ; so that
at last he takes it as a matter of course, that
for such things there is no why ; they are so
simply because they are so. He sees that in
268 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
order to please his teachers and receive an attes-
tation of merit, he must know so many cases
and so many tenses by heart ; and so he sits'
down and learns them by heart. That is all :
his teachers are satisfied, his parents delighted ;
some of his companions, who are a little lazier
or more independent, or, even better endowed
with brains than he is, have not such a good
memory, seem to envy him : what else can he
desire? He acquiesces by and by in the univer-
sal supineness ; that natural, almost irrepressi-
ble, tendency to ask why, is checked, and when
he has learned some dozens of cases and tenses
he is convinced that he knows of grammar
about all that there is to know.
Still it is impossible that human nature,
which delights in reasoning more than in mem-
orizing, should be satisfied with such kind of
knowledge ; and we can easily understand why
so many, who in after life proved to be very
great men, when they were boys, either disliked
grammar profoundly, or showed themselves
very backward in learning it.
The science of language will make a great
change in all this : the study of language will
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 269
become very soon a matter of reasoning rather
than of memory. — Once boys and girls were
taught nothing about the laws which rule our
bodily organism. Now they learn the pro-
cesses by which food is transformed into blood ;
the composition of our bodies, the forming and
perishing of our tissues ; the development of
our muscles, the function of our nerves, the
structure of our eyes and ears and lungs, and
the principal laws which govern our physical
life. In the same way they will learn that
there are laws which govern the life of our
language ; they will be taught how words are
built, where such and slich a word comes from,
and how it came to assume its present form.
Of course, at first it will be a matter of no little
difficulty to adapt such teaching to the intelli-
gence of young people. But this difficulty will
be easily overcome by experience. It is not
much more difficult to adapt to the capacity
of a boy the fundamental laws of language,
than the fundamental laws of physiology. And
that his mind will be interested in it, there is no
room for doubt ; since he must learn a lan-
guage, he will feel greatly relieved if you show
270 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
him how the things which he has to commit to
memory came to be. I never happened to
talk to a boy or a girl, a gentleman or a lady,
about any linguistic fact, whether etymological,
comparative or phonetic, without their taking
real delight in the argument. It must indeed
be no little pleasure to discover in the old well-
worn words, which we use every moment
almost unconsciously, facts and relations which
open before us an entire world of historical
information ; which throw a flood of light
upon the way in which we inherit the old
words and form new ones ; and the way in
which we develop their meaning, bending it to
the ever increasing and exacting wants of our
mind.
Of course we shall have to change many of
our ideas about grammar. As we have had
occasion already to point out, the grammar
which is now generally studied in our schools,
is merely a copy, with some blunders added, of
the grammar which was used in Rome about
2000 years ago. It is sad, but it is a fact.
Many notions have to be given up, which com-
parative philology shows are entirely wrong ;
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 271
many have to be modified, and many other ele-
ments introduced. Of course this will take a
long time ; meanwhile, since the Greek gram-
mar of George Curtius, and the Latin grammars
of Schweitzer-Sidler, of Miiller-Lattmann, and
Robs, a great improvement has been attained
in teaching the classical languages. As for the
modern languages, the English grammar of
Morris, the French grammars of Brachet, and
Meissner, and Ayer, the German grammars of
Scherer, of Vilmar, and Heyse, and the Neo-
Latin grammars of Monaci and D'Ovidio, are
the best specimens of grammars as modified by
the results of the science of language.
As for English especially, to all those who
wish to acquire a rational, superior knowledge
of the language, we could never advocate
strongly enough the study, at least elementary,
of Anglo-Saxon and Latin. Those who will
give to these two languages at least one or two
years of good and serious study, will store away
in their minds a precious treasure, which will nev-
er fail them; they will lay a foundation, on which
all the knowledge they acquire in after years,
will rest as a solid and substantial structure.
272 , THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
When the study of languages is carried on in
this way, the chief objection, which rests on its
appealing only to memory, falls of itself. Not
that science should be excluded from educa-
tion ; far from that, there never was a time
when a scientific training was so important as it
is now-a-days. But it is to be remembered that
in a standard education language will always
have the first -place, since there is nothing in
the world that represents man so fully in his
whole being as language. No other study
develops all our faculties so thoroughly; only
it is to be pursued with such a method as to
call really into action all the forces of our mind.
The great advantage of the study of science
is to accustom our minds to observe the exist-
ence of laws in the universe ; to understand
how such laws work, how they can be known
by us ; and that the only way in which we can
master them, is by obeying them.
It is obvious that this logical habit of mind
can be cultivated by the study of languages as
well as by that of sciences, if only we pursue it
according to the methods which comparative
philology teaches us.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 273
Besides our ideas about grammars, we have
to change not a little also our ideas about dic-
tionaries. The dictionary of a language is a
record, a depository, of all the words that
belong to that language. But every record of
the kind has to be classified. Without clas-
sification it is difficult to find what we want
among a small number of things; it is nearly
impossible among a large number. Besides,
classification ought to be such that when we
know to what class, or family, or order, one
thing belongs, we should, by this mere fact,
know what are its essential qualities and char-
acteristics, and how it is connected with, or sepa-
rated from, other things of the same kind.
It is then of the greatest importance which
characteristics we assume as foundations for
our classifications. Had we to classify books
by their size, plants by their height, animals
by the number of their extremities, our clas-
sifications would be of very little help, indeed,
in bibliographical, botanical and zoological
studies. We would find a treatise on meta-
physics beside a book on nervous diseases ; a
poem of Homer near the file of a humoristic
2 74 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
paper ; potatoes near heliotropes ; serpents and
fish, men and birds together. On the contrary,
we know that books are classified in catalogues
according to their subjects, and such catalogues
are supplemented by the alphabetical list of
the authors' names. Plants and animals are
so accurately classified according to their most
essential organs, that when we know to what
class a plant or an animal belongs, we know
almost all that science can tell us about that
plant and that animal. Classification, properly
understood, is the last result of science ; indeed
science consists in classifying the universe.
Let us now turn to what happened with the
classification of words in our dictionaries. The
most important elements in a word are its root
and its meaning. Do our dictionaries classify
words according to either or both of such char-
acteristics ? Not at all. They classify words
according to their Tfrrf /^^^^r.' Why not, for
instance, according to the second letter? or to
the last letter ? It would be just as reasonable ;
nay, there is a greater advantage in having
words classified by their endings than by their
beginnings. The beginning of a word may be
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 275
either a part of the root, or a prefix, or the
beginning of another word, which helps to form
a compound word ; so that, really, from the
beginning of a word we have no light whatever
on its structure or composition. The ending,
on the contrary, is generally a suffix with a
certain meaning ; and by seeing so many
suffixes side by side, the student would, at least
intuitively, if in no other way, learn the par-
ticular meaning of each suffix, and thus would
at least have a clue to the formation of words.
We have many instances of dictionaries of this
kind ; but they were compiled with another
practical aim ; namely, to help cheap poets to
find their rhymes !
Still, so great is the force of habit, so unre-
flective are we when we deal with language,
that I am sure many readers must have laughed
when I said : " Why not make a dictionary
according to the endings of words?"
And then, what is the order according to
which we classify the beginnings of our words?
It is the so-called alphabetical order. But this
is no order at all. The order of our alphabet
is simply a chaos. Vowels and consonants are
276 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
mixed up together without reason or dis-
crimination. The present order of our letters
has no more scientific value than if we put all
of them into a box and take them out one by-
one, blindfolded. The Hindu grammarians
were far ahead of us in this as in every thing
that concerns grammar ; their alphabet, besides
being far more perfect than ours, is classified
in a thoroughly scientific way. First we have
the vowels ; these, too, rationally classified.
Then come the consonants, classified according
to their physiological nature : gutturals, labials,
dentals, etc.
But this does not matter much for our argu-
ment about dictionaries. What is important is
that we must recognize the entire absence from
our dictionaries of any thing worth the name
of classification. Words which have nothing in
common, either in their root or meaning, are
registered beside one another simply because
they happen to begin with the same letter. A
classification of animals by the number of their
extremities would be just as valuable as this.
A good scientific classification of the materials
of our language would help us immensely, be-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 277
yond any thing- we can imagine, in mastering
easily and scientifically the whole language, as
a rational classification helps us in the study of
zoology and botany. Absence of classification,
which would make it impossible to learn zool-
ogy or botany, is one of the reasons why our
knowledge of languages, even of our own, is
generally so scanty and poor.
We have seen that the most important char-
acteristics of words are their roots and their
meanings. We must resort to either of these
elements in order to have a good classification
of words. Attempts at classifying words ac-
cording to their meaning or, as they are called,
idealogical dictionaries, have been made every
now and then. And very useful they are,
withal ; but sometimes a word is used with dif-
ferent meanings, and the borders between one
group and another of ideas are so difficult to
trace, that some confusion is unavoidable.
On the other hand, roots are such a substan-
tial and distinct element, and the knowledge
of the value of a root, and of the most impor-
tant affixes, leads us so clearly to the funda-
mental meaning of the word, that evidently a
278 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
classification of words according to their roots
is at once easier and more advantageous. In
this, too, we can learn a good deal from the
Indians ; Sanskrit dictionaries start not from
words, but from roots.
We must consider that hardly any language
has more than five hundred roots as the origin
of all its words. Now, had we all its words ar-
ranged under these five hundred and odd roots,
how easy it would be to take every day half a
dozen of those roots, or ten, or twelve, and
learn them, and look carefully at their most
important derivatives ! We could then in a
few weeks go over all the material of the rich-
est language in the world. We could see the
links that connect words, apparently dissimilar,
into so many clusters. We could see their
fundamental meaning, and how it is modi-
fied by prefixes and suffixes. We could see
how one group of words is allied with another.
We could, then, read and study a dictionary
systematically, just as we read or study a treat-
ise on zoology or botany. Instead of a form-
less, unreasonable, hap-hazard agglomeration of
words, we would have all of one language
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 279
reduced to a system. The story, or rather the
life, of a root would He before us, just as a map
of a river ; we see its source, we see it growing
on its way, as it winds through valleys, and
plains ; we see it branch in two or three direc-
tions ; we see the rivulets and torrents that
run into it.
The fnaterials for such dictionaries are not
yet ready in full, but they are coming in steadily
and rapidly. The day is not far off when our
dictionaries will be looked at as we look at the
botanical classifications, or rather agglomera-
tions, of two centuries ago. Lexicology
awaits its Linnaeus, and it will have him.
Now it remains for us to consider how lan-
guage is to be represented. It is needless to
sketch here the secular efforts by which the
accumulated labor and genius of generations and
generations, starting from the rudest attempts,
came to represent words with letters, as all
civilized peoples do. What is important to
notice is, that whatever means we resort to, the
signs we use must represent the words we
utter, in a clear unmistakable way. Our signs
must photograph our words. If any body,
28o THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
looking at the sign, feels doubtful what kind of
sound is represented thereby, that sign is im-
perfect ; it should be corrected. In plain
words, our spelling must be the faithful picture
of our speaking. This has been attained
almost to perfection by such languages as
Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, Italian,
Spanish, Russian, and others. It is with an
uncontrollable feeling of sadness and shame
that one turns to the English system of spell-
ing. English spelling is the greatest monument
of stupidity that the history of languages shows
us. The notion that words are not letters, but
sounds, has been forgotten to such an extent
by the English speaking people ; the confusion
between the relations of sounds and their rep-
resentatives in writing has been carried to such
a point, that it would be ridiculous, were it not
so harmful. We find poets who rhyme i5y with
beauty, was and pass, known and won, was and
alas!z.ViA other words which have nothing in com-
mon except apart of their spelling. This fact,
apparently so unimportant, betrays the deepest
ignorance of the nature of language, that it is
possible to conceive.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 281
I will not insist at length on this argument.
All who know what language is, and what the
function of spelling is, are fully aware of the
gross inconvenience of English spelling. It is
not only the greatest drawback to the spread
of the English language, but also a very great
encumbrance to the education of English speak-
ing people. The reader may consult with profit
an excellent article by Frederic D. Fernald in
the " Popular Science Monthly " (Sept. '83),
" How Spelling Damages the Mind" ; and J. H.
Gladstone's " The Spelling Reform " ; Max
Miiller's " Spelling" (Fortnightly Review,
April 1876) ; Whitney's " How shall we Spell?"
The question is urgent, and all thoughtful
men should take a share in ventilating it and
promoting its solution. Only this I will add:
when we hear a foreigner make some curious
mistake in pronunciation, instead of feeling
like laughing, we should feel humiliated, because
of our miserable spelling, which does not
convey immediately and of itself alone the
sound of the word.
Now, on reaching the end of our not long
journey, which I wish had proved to my reader
282 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
at least half as interesting as it has been to me,
let us cast a glance at language as a whole, as
the official organ, so to speak, of a people.
When, through influences of races or migra-
tions, or political and social revolutions, a lan-
guage has been at last set down as the lan-
guage of a people, ho.w does its development
go on ? For instance, since the time when France
was strongly organized into a state, and
French became the language of literature, of
science, of government, of commerce, and the
means of intercourse between the generality of
the French people, what forces have contrib-
uted to its development ? Because French, not
less than any other language, is developing
still ; is stilllosing and transforming old words
and acquiring new ones every day.
Languages present to us the highest standard
of organic constitution which any political
body might be happy to approach. The high-
est pattern of a political constitution would be
that by which all the forces of the people, of
the rich as well as the poor, of the educated as
well as the uneducated, of the individuals by
themselves as well as of corporations, trades and
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 283
callings, are brought to work together, helping
one another, and checking each other's too
one-sided tendencies, for a final harmonizing of
the whole work.
Languages show us exactly such kinds of
typical constitutions. The educated, who have
a better sense of the value of words and often
know where they come from, have a natural
tendency, in their speaking and writing, to be
conservative, to preserve words in their time-
honored forms, to renew old meanings and
revive old words which have been lost. On
the other hand, they bring also into language a
very progressive element, inasmuch as their
being in the van of science, philosophy, art, lit-
erature and government, makes it indispensable
for them to coin new words, or to give old
words new meanings, in order to designate the
new ideas which they are the first to scout.
The uneducated, or half-educated, are also
progressive in one respect, as on account of
their imperfect knowledge of the structure of
words, they are not well aware of the true value
of each part of them ; they are, therefore, very
careless in handling them, and the wear and
284 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
tear which eats up or transforms words from
generation to generation, is especially due to
the dialectic transformations which they undergo
at the hands of the least educated. On the
other side, the uneducated are strongly con-
servative of familiar words and sayings, and
very slow to adopt the new words which are
introduced into the language by the progress
of culture.
Meanwhile, together with those two main
streams, numberless rivulets contribute to make
up the great river of national speech. The
scientist or the philosopher brings in a new
word for a new idea, for a new phenomenon
observed, for a new disease or a new experi-
ment ; the poet a new epithet ; the sailor a new
name for a kind of wave, or a nesv implement
on his ship ; the traveler the name of a foreign
plant, or animal, or custom, or dress ; the cow-
boy a new word concerning cattle-raising.
Thus every living force of the people tells on
its language. Thus it is that language may be
said to be the mirror of the life of a people.
We can say more : language is the best record,
as well as the highest reward, of a people's
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 285
labor. Look at what happens daily around
us. A man who lives on the sea, knows so
many things and has so many words about
ships,- waves, winds, and gales, that we land-
lubbers listen to with astonishment. A lumber-
man has many words to indicate every kind of
wood, their properties and qualities, that no
scholar knows. A painter can see and name a
large number of colors and nuances, whose
existence the layman does not even suspect.
In the same way, the more varied, the more
lively, the more intense the activity of a
people, the richer, the stronger, the higher its
language — and the richer especially in those
directions in which the activity of the people
has particularly developed. No language is so
rich as German in metaphysical and philological
terms, because no people, in modern history at
least, has given so much study to metaphysics
and philology. Why Italian is so rich in musi-
cal and artistic terms, it is easy to understand.
The sociableness of French people explains
their genial wealth of conversational words and
idioms.
If we turn now to the English language, we
286 THE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS.
have before us a spectacle so great, that I do
not know where we can find a parallel. En-
glish speaking people are spread all over the
world ; there is no degree of latitude, no cor-
ner of the globe, but bears witness to the glory
of this race. They are great in science, rich and
inventive in literature, deep in poetry, active
and successful in commerce, manly in war,
giants at sea. In social and political organi-
zation they lead the world. Must we wonder
then, that the English language has been devel-
oped in such a way that, taken as a whole, no lan-
guage can stand comparison with it ? No lan-
guage combines to such a degree strength with
simplicity, depth with perspicuousness, innate
poetical vigor with practical efificacy.
We have had occasion to mention that the
further we go back in the history of civilization,
the greater we find the number of languages
spoken. Civilization in its triumphal march
unifies tribes into nations, and reduces the
number of languages, sweeping out of existence
those which are unfit for the struggle. If one
day civilization should unite — and we fervidly
hope it will — all or almost all the world into a
2'HE PHILOSOPHY OF WORDS. 287
bond of peaceable brotherhood, one language
will supersede all others, and become the recog-
nized language of that brotherhood. No other
of the living languages has as great chances of
becoming that language as English. There is,
it is true, a great drawback in its miserable
spelling ; but this is an evil which can and will
be corrected. English is the language of the
future.
THE END.