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but which originally would have meant I desire. It is not without importance that Hesychius mentions the very form which we should have expected, namely, mólpis, instead of the more usual élpis, hope.1

We have throughout these investigations met on several occasions with an s prefixed to mar, and we have treated it simply as a modificatory element added for the purpose of distinguishing words which it was felt desirable to keep distinct. Without inquiring into the real origin of this s, which has lately been the subject of violent disputes between Professors Pott and Curtius, we may take it for granted that the Sanskrit root smar is closely related to the root mar; nor is it difficult 2 to discover how the meaning of smar, namely, to remember, could have been elaborated out of mar, to grind. We saw over and over again that the idea of melting glided into that of loving, hoping, and desiring, and we shall find that the original meaning of smar in Sanskrit is to desire, not to remember. Thus Sk. smara is love, very much like the Lithuanian meile, love, i. e. melting. From this meaning of desiring, new meanings branched off, such as dwelling on, brooding over, musing over, and then recollecting. In the other Aryan languages the initial specific s does not appear. We have memor in Latin, memoria, memorare, all in the special sense of remembering; but in Greek mermaíró means simply I brood, I care, I mourn; mérimna is anxiety, and even mártyr need not necessarily mean a man who remembers, but 1 Curtius, G. E. ii. 167.

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2 Curtius mentions smar as one of the roots which, if not from the beginning, had, at all events before the Aryan separation, assumed an entirely intellectual meaning." — G. E. i. 84.

a man who cares for, who cherishes, who holds a thing.1

In unravelling this cluster of words, it has been my chief object to trace the gradual growth of ideas, the slow progress of the mind from the single to the general, from the material to the spiritual, from the concrete to the abstract. To rub down or to polish

leads to the idea of propitiation; to wear off or to wither are expressions applied to the consuming feeling of hopes deferred and hearts sickening, and ideas like memory and martyrdom are clothed in words taken from the same source.

The fates and fortunes of this one root mar form but a small chapter in the history and growth of the Aryan languages; but we may derive from this small chapter some idea as to the power and elasticity of roots, and the unlimited sway of metaphor in the formation of new ideas.

1 Cf. lóμwpos, ¿yxeoíμwpos, in the sense of caring for arrows, spears, &c., Benary, Kuhn's Zeitschrift, iv. 53; and iσropes dɛoí, 'Aypav?.os, 'Evváλos, 'Apns, Zeus, Preller, Griechische Mythologie, p. 205.

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LECTURE VIII.

METAPHOR.

FEW Philosophers have so clearly perceived the importance of language in all the operations of the human mind, few have so constantly insisted on the necessity of watching the influence of words on thought, as Locke in his " Essay concerning Human Understanding." Of the four books into which this great work is divided, one, the third, is entirely devoted to Words or Language in general. At the time when Locke wrote, but little attention had been paid to the philosophy of language, and the author, afraid that he might seem to have given more prominence to this subject than it deserved, thought it necessary to defend himself against such a charge in the following words: "What I have here said concerning words in this third book will possibly be thought by some to be much more than what so slight a subject required. I allow, it might be brought into a narrower compass; but I was willing to stay my reader on an argument that appears to me new, and a little out of the way (I am sure it is one I thought not of when I began to write); that by searching it to the bottom, and turning it on every side, some part or other might meet with every one's thoughts, and give occasion to the

most averse or negligent to reflect on a general miscarriage, which, though of great consequence, is little taken notice of. When it is considered what a pudder is made about essences, and how much all sorts of knowledge, discourse, and conversation are pestered and disordered by the careless and confused use and application of words, it will, perhaps, be thought worth while thoroughly to lay it open. And I shall be pardoned if I have dwelt long on an argument which I think, therefore, needs to be inculcated; because the faults men are usually guilty of in this kind are not only the greatest hindrances of true knowledge, but are so well thought of as to pass for it. Men would often see what a small pittance of reason and truth, or possibly none at all, is mixed with those huffing opinions they are swelled with, if they would but look beyond fashionable sounds, and observe what ideas are, or are not, comprehended under those words with which they are so armed at all points, and with which they so confidently lay about them. I shall imagine I have done some service to truth, peace, and learning, if, by an enlargement on this subject, I can make men reflect on their own use of language, and give them reason to suspect, that, since it is frequent for others, it may also be possible for them, to have sometimes very good and approved words in their mouths and writings, with very uncertain, little, or no signification. And, therefore, it is not unreasonable for them to be wary herein themselves, and not to be unwilling to have these examined by others." 1

1 Locke, On the Understanding, iii. 5, 16.

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And again, when summing up the results of his inquiries, Locke says: "For since the things the mind contemplates are none of them, besides itself, present to the understanding, it is necessary that something else, as a sign or representation of the thing it considers, should be present to it; and these are ideas. And because the scene of ideas that make one man's thoughts cannot be laid open to the immediate view of another, nor laid up anywhere but in the memory, a no very sure repository, therefore, to communicate our thoughts to one another, as well as record them for our own use, signs of our ideas are also necessary. Those which men have found most convenient, and therefore generally make use of, are articulate sounds. The consideration, then, of ideas and words as the great instruments of knowledge, makes no despicable part of their consideration, who would take a view of human knowledge in the whole extent of it. And, perhaps, if they were distinctly weighed and duly considered, they would afford us another sort of logic and critic than what we have been hitherto acquainted with."

But, although so strongly impressed with the importance which language, as such, claims in the operations of the understanding, Locke never perceived that general ideas and words are inseparable, that the one cannot exist without the other, and that an arbitrary imposition of articulate sounds to signify definite ideas is an assumption unsupported by any evidence. Locke never seems to have realized the intricacies of the names-giving process; and though he admits frequently the difficulty, nay, sometimes the impossibility, of our handling any

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