The Complete Works of Plato

by Plato

These are some of the reflections which the modern philosophy of language suggests to us about the powers of the human mind and the forces and influences by which the efforts of men to utter articulate sounds were inspired.

Yet in making these and similar generalizations we may note also dangers to which we are exposed.

Read on for a list.

The words 'evolution,' 'birth,' 'law,' development,' 'instinct,' 'implicit,' 'explicit,' and the like, have a false clearness or comprehensiveness, which adds nothing to our knowledge.

There is the error of supposing that the analysis of grammar and logic has always existed, or that their distinctions were familiar to Socrates and Plato.

There is the danger which besets all enquiries into the early history of man—of interpreting the past by the present, and of substituting the definite and intelligible for the true but dim outline which is the horizon of human knowledge.

The greatest light is thrown upon the nature of language by analogy. We have the analogy of the cries of animals, of the songs of birds ('man, like the nightingale, is a singing bird, but is ever binding up thoughts with musical notes'), of music, of children learning to speak, of barbarous nations in which the linguistic instinct is still undecayed, of ourselves learning to think and speak a new language, of the deaf and dumb who have words without sounds, of the various disorders of speech; and we have the after-growth of mythology, which, like language, is an unconscious creation of the human mind.

We may observe that the child learns to speak, as he learns to walk or to eat, by a natural impulse; yet in either case not without a power of imitation which is also natural to him—he is taught to read, but he breaks forth spontaneously in speech.

We can understand how man creates or constructs consciously and by design; and see, if we do not understand, how nature, by a law, calls into being an organised structure.

But the intermediate organism which stands between man and nature, which is the work of mind yet unconscious, and in which mind and matter seem to meet, and mind unperceived to herself is really limited by all other minds, is neither understood nor seen by us, and is with reluctance admitted to be a fact.

Language is an aspect of man, of nature, and of nations, the transfiguration of the world in thought, the meeting-point of the physical and mental sciences, and also the mirror in which they are reflected, present at every moment to the i...

And speech is not a separate faculty, but the expression of all our faculties, to which all our other powers of expression, signs, looks, gestures, lend their aid, of which the instrument is not the tongue only, but more than half the human frame.

Fixed words, like fixed ideas, have often governed the world. But in such representations we attribute to language too much the nature of a cause, and too little of an effect,—too much of an absolute, too little of a relative character,—too much of an ideal, too little of a matter-of-fact existence.

Or again, we may frame a single abstract notion of language of which all existent languages may be supposed to be the perversion. But we must not conceive that this logical figment had ever a real existence, or is anything more than an effort of the mind to give unity to infinitely various phenomena.

There is no abstract language 'in rerum natura,' any more than there is an abstract tree, but only languages in various sta...

Nor do other logical distinctions or even grammatical exactly correspond to the facts of language; for they too are attempts to give unity and regulari...

Another road through this chaos is provided by the physiology of speech. The organs of language are the same in all mankind, and are only capable of uttering a certain number of sounds. Every man has tongue, teeth, lips, palate, throat, mouth, which he may close or open, and adapt in various ways; making, first, vowels and consonants; and secondly, other classes of letters.

The elements of all speech, like the elements of the musical scale, are few and simple, though admitting of infinite gradations and combinations.

the law is but partially seen; the traces of it are often lost in the distance. For languages have a natural but not a perfect growth; like other creations of nature into which the will of man enters, they are full of what we term accident and irregularity.

Yet the materials at our disposal are far greater than any individual can use. Such are a few of the general reflections which the present state of philology calls up.

there is no primitive form or forms of language known to us, or to be reasonably imagined, from which they are all descended.

The influence of individuals must always have been a disturbing element. Like great writers in later times, there may have been many a barbaric genius who taught the men of his tribe to sing or speak, showing them by example how to continue or divide their words, charming their souls with rhythm and accent and intonation, finding in familiar objects the expression of their confused fancies—to whom the whole of language might in truth be said to be a figure of speech.

'words are not made but grow.'

It would be well if there were a similar consensus about some other points which appear to be still in dispute. Is language conscious or unconscious?

What is supposed to be our consciousness of language is really only the analysis of it, and this analysis admits of innumerable degrees.

Now in this sense we may truly say that we are not conscious of ordinary speech, though we are commonly roused to attention by the misuse or mispronunciation of a word.

Neither in our own nor in any other age has the conscious effort of reflection in man contributed in an appreciable degree to the formation of language.

A kindred error is the separation of the phonetic from the mental element of language; they are really inseparable—no definite line can be drawn between them, any more than in any other common act of mind and body.

The answer in all cases is the same—that the laws of nature are uniform, though the consistency or continuity of them is not always perceptible to us.

The comparison of the growth of language in the individual and in the nation cannot be wholly discarded, for nations are made up of individuals.

It might be well sometimes to lay aside figures of speech, such as the 'root' and the 'branches,' the 'stem,' the 'strata' of Geology, the 'compounds' of Chemistry, 'the ripe fruit of pronouns dropping from verbs' (see above), and the like, which are always interesting, but are apt to be delusive.

Yet such figures of speech are far nearer the truth than the theories which attribute the invention and improvement of language to the conscious action of the human mind...Lastly, it is doubted by recent philologians whether climate can be supposed to have exercised any influence worth speaking of on a language: such a view is said to be unproven: it had better therefore not be silently assumed.

The struggle for existence among words is not of that fierce and irresistible kind in which birds, beasts and fishes devour one another, but of a milder sort, allowing one usage to be substituted for another, not by force, but by the persuasion, or rather by the prevailing habit, of a majority.

Grammar gives an erroneous conception of language: for it reduces to a system that which is not a system.

The ordinary Greek grammar gives a complete paradigm of the verb, without suggesting that the double or treble forms of Perfects, Aorists, etc. are hardly ever contemporaneous. It distinguishes Moods and Tenses, without observing how much of the nature of one passes into the other. It makes three Voices, Active, Passive, and Middle, but takes no notice of the precarious existence and uncertain character of the last of the three. Language is a thing of degrees and relations and associations and exceptions: grammar ties it up in fixed rules.

Language has many varieties of usage: grammar tries to reduce them to a single one. Grammar divides verbs into regular and irregular: it does not recognize that the irregular, equally with the regular, are subject to law, and that a language which had no exceptions would not be a natural growth: for it could not have been subjected to the influences by which language is ordinarily affected.

Metaphysics are even more troublesome than the figments of grammar, because they wear the appearance of philosophy and there is no test to which they can be subjected.

They are useful in so far as they give us an insight into the history of the human mind and the modes of thought which have existed in former ages; or in so far as they furnish wider conceptions of the different branches of knowledge and of their relation to one another.

Westphal holds that there are three stages of language: (1) in which things were characterized independently, (2) in which they were regarded in relation to human thought, and (3) in relation to one another.

But are not such distinctions an anachronism? for they imply a growth of abstract ideas which never existed in early times.

Language cannot be explained by Metaphysics; for it is prior to them and much mor...

(4) Our knowledge of language is almost confined to languages which are fully developed.

The laws of language can be best discerned in the great crises of language, especially in the transitions from ancient to modern forms of them, whether in Europe or Asia. Such changes are the silent notes of the world's history; they mark periods of unknown length in which war and conquest were running riot over whole continents, times of suffering too great to be endured by the human race, in which the masters became subjects and the subject races masters, in which driven by necessity or impelled by some instinct, tribes or nations left their original homes and but slowly found a resting-place.

Language would be the greatest of all historical monuments, if it could only tell us the history of itself.

(5) There are many ways in which we may appro...

The simplest of all is to observe our own use of language in conversation or in writing, how we put words together, how we construct and connect sentences, what are the rules of accent and rhythm in verse or prose, the formation and composition of words, the laws of euphony and sound, the affinities of letters...

Even a little Latin will enable us to appreciate the grand difference between ancient and modern European languages.

A few well-selected questions may lead the student at once into the heart of the mystery: such as, Why are the pronouns and the verb of existence generally more irregular than any other parts of speech?

We have also sought to indicate the sources of our knowledge of it and the spirit in which we should approach it, we may now proceed to consider some of the principles or natural laws which have created or modified it. i. The first and simplest of all the principles of language, common also to the animals, is imitation. The lion roars, the wolf howls in the solitude of the forest: they are answered by similar cries heard from a distance. The bird, too, mimics the voice of man and makes answer to him.

Man tells to man the secret place in which he is hiding himself; he remembers and repeats the sound which he has heard.

The love of imitation becomes a passion and an ...